Pauls case willa cather. Summary and Theme of Paul's Case by Willa Cather/Class 12 Major English (New Course) 2022-10-30
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Summary and Theme of Paul's Case by Willa Cather/Class 12 Major English (New Course)
Paul takes a train to New York City after stealing a large sum of money from his job that he was supposed to take to the bank. He awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon, very thirsty and dizzy, and rang for ice-water, coffee, and the Pittsburg papers. A truly remarkable portrayal by Cather. The thing was winding itself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and had even provided a way to snap the thread. It was a little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, and, after settling with the cabman, went into the office.
Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be. The story "Paul's Case" straddles two centuries of action and idea, and like many a more recent fiction it ends openly, equivocally. He told the salesman he wanted to wear one of the new suits and the coat immediately. When he was told that he could go, he bowed gracefully and went out. He remembered every feature of both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all of his fellow-passengers on the ferry. Certainly none of the company ever suspected it, least of all Charley Edwards.
He was so much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries and reproaches. When the weather was warm, and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind, the girls made lemonade, which was always brought out in a red-glass pitcher, ornamented with forget-me-nots in blue enamel. It said Paul had been seen in a New York hotel. It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theatre was for Paul the actual portal of Romance. MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Ripe for radical change in his life, Paul is almost immediately seen en route by train to Paul's capacity to lie convincingly and his theft of money from his employer take him to a room in the Waldorf, where for the first time he feels freed of the dread that has haunted him all through his life.
He seemed to feel himself go after her up the steps, into the warm, lighted building, into an exotic, a tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and basking ease. Paul is suspended for a week for his attitude of defiance. As a result, his father forces him to leave his job as an usser. He had not a hundred dollars left; and he knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him--well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. Paul feels even worse, however, when he returns to the schoolroom from such escapes.
Paul awoke, feeling dirty and uncomfortable. He said the bank would close soon and would not open again until Monday. His only reason for allowing Paul to usher was that he thought a boy ought to be earning a little. The story teases by means of what it does not say; our towns are filled with Pauls whom we will never understand. Therefore, the author pinpoints that the inadequate attention that Paul receives from his father contributes to his character of deception and temperament that manifest at both school and home Ku 74. Paul feels out of place with the people on Cordelia Street because they serve to remind him of his own lackluster life. The snow was whirling so fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street but within the air was deliciously soft and fragrant.
Paul bought two suits, several white silk shirts, some silk ties of different colors. When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there, Paul stated, politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school. He spent upward of two hours there, buying with endless reconsidering and great care. His stifling American surroundings have not given him the release he senses in the Parisian and Venetian scenes that hang in the orchestra hall's picture gallery and that "exhilarated him. He stood through it, smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. Retrieved December 3, 2017. The overwhelming character adopted by the young man results in his suicidal attempt that succeeds at the railroads.
He stooped and put a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked, but that, too, seemed hot. The salesman bowed and smiled. The white silk shirt and the blue and lilac tie felt cool and smooth under his fingers. His chief greediness lay in his ears and eyes, and his excesses were not offensive ones. He had won a place among Edwards's following, not only because the young actor, who could not afford to employ a dresser, often found the boy very useful, but because he recognized in Paul something akin to what Churchmen term 'vocation. Boys in livery were running in and out of the awning that was stretched across the sidewalk, up and down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street.
He sat at a table near a window. In this case it is a certain hypersensitivity that makes Paul uneasy company for his high school peers and his teachers. When Paul went down to dinner, the music of the orchestra came floating up the elevator shaft to greet him. With something of the childish belief in miracles with which he had so often gone to class, all his lessons unlearned, Paul dressed and dashed whistling down the corridor to the elevator. Above, about, within it all was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on every side of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth.
But the other side of the world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he could not have waited for it; his need had been too sharp. Paul's Case: A Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The insult was so involuntary and definitely personal as to be unforgettable. Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely ever read at all. In general, Paul remains painfully trapped in a world that forces him to hide his homosexuality from others as well as himself.
On seasonable Sunday afternoons the burghers of Cordelia Street always sat out on their front "stoops," and talked to their neighbors on the next stoop, or called to those across the street in neighborly fashion. There was a story that, some five years ago--he was now barely twenty-six--he had been a trifle 'dissipated,' but in order to curb his appetites and save the loss of time and strength that a sowing of wild oats might have entailed, he had taken his chief's advice, oft reiterated to his employees, and at twenty-one had married the first woman whom he could persuade to share his fortunes. In this case, the failure of the family unit to instill the appropriate values in the young man affects his relations with other individuals in the school setting. It seems that Paul is disturbed by past incident of mother as well as presents behaviour of his father. The young man was relating how his chief, now cruising in the Mediterranean, kept in touch with all the details of the business, arranging his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home, and "knocking off work enough to keep two stenographers busy.
