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| Red Cloud, Nebraska |
In every literary works it is not just the ink we see on the page. The writer transfers something of him/herself to the text when the pen touches the paper. Words are a marvelous thing that can convey many layers and meanings. This is true for Willa Cather’s Paul’s Case which she published in 1905 when she was still a high-school teacher in Allegheny, Pittsburgh. We are told the story of a depressed young man Paul who refuses to become a mere cog in the machine that is society. He longs for the finer things in life where he can “find romance and escape the drab reality of his daily life” (Carpenter-Houde). This reflects the feelings of the author towards her home in the frontier prairie village of Red Cloud, Nebraska where her family settled after leaving Virginia. She felt confined by the wide open plains and “hungered for a broader life experience” (Sirridge). In reading Paul’s Case I looked at the relationship between the author and the story, the constraints of society and division of social classes, obsession with material wealth, and the theme of communication.
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| Willa Cather (1873-1947) |
It was not until 1912 long after she graduated and after her career as a journalist that Cather found her subject after a trip home to Red Cloud: “she no longer saw her adolescence on the prairie as deprived and stifling, she was able to feel that her own experience was significant enough to write about” (Cather 228). I feel Paul represents not just Cather in her adolescence years but every teenager that struggles with depression and the constraints of society. Cather picked Pittsburgh as the background for her story based on her adolescent experiences in Nebraska but also “her love of music and concerts led her to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ‘the city of steel’” (Merriman). This is a tragic story in which I think Cather is sympathizing with those who, like herself, felt deprived in their adolescent years. I think she feels she is one of the lucky ones and she wants to be the voice for all those poor souls who couldn’t escape the suppression of society. It’s as if she wants to tell their story in the hope that people will listen and help these people.
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| Pittsburgh, Steel City |
Cather went to Pittsburgh for her interest in music and concerts but it was also a manufacturing city concerned with steel works. Already we see the divide in society, the two social classes that form the basis for Cather’s story. Paul feels very “frustrated with his home life and his family’s expectations that he would grow up to work in a factory or the steel mills as his father and most of his neighbors did” (Sirridge). It was Paul’s “father’s dearest hope that he would pattern” a “clerk to one of the magnates of a great steel corporation” (Cather 234).
No-one realizes that Paul’s behavior is a rebellion against the constraints of society: “[d]isorder and impertinence were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble” (229). They came to the conclusion that “[t]here is something wrong with the fellow” (230), never considering that it may be society that has suppressed him to a state of rebellion and insolence even when “his master had noted with amazement what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawn and wrinkled like an old man’s about the eyes, the lips twitching even in his sleep, and stiff with a nervous tension that drew them back from his teeth” (230).
It seems Paul has an obsession with materialistic society where everything revolves around money. Cather was against consumerism which “she saw as taking over society” (Stout 3). Paul feels constrained by this society as it makes him feel inadequate. He desires riches but knows he won’t be rich like the men he hears his dad talk about so he creates his own fantasy world saturated with self-obsession and shut off from any real emotion and communication: “in Paul’s world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty” (Cather 235). He found beauty in music: “any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ” (236). He’s also not stage struck yet “he had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician” (236).
I feel as if Paul does not want to be controlled by society. He does not want to become another blank face in a system that does not allow you to enjoy the beauty of your work: “what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything” (236). This I feel reflects Cather’s feelings that there is a “cheapening of life and lowering of standards of quality on all fronts” (Stout 3), brought on by an emerging consumerist society. She is concerned “about the cheapening of things and experiences” (3), which is the lack of appreciation for art and beauty and in a way it seems that these beautiful things are being left behind along with Paul in an increasingly bland and systematic society.
The lack of dialogue in Paul’s Case signifies Paul’s inability to communicate with the world and his unemotional relationship with his family. He rarely mentions his sisters using one for a lie but he doesn’t give her name: “his sister was ill, and he should have to defer his voyage until spring” (Cather 236). The only other time he mentions them is when they are in the street “talking to the minister’s daughters next door about how many shirt-waists they had made” (234). We barely even know the sisters exist as he never talks to them conveying his lack of social ability even with those closest to him. He also never mentions his father’s name.
Colors are used to define Paul’s life. His characteristics, ambitions, and feelings are encapsulated in these colors, yellow for example representing ugliness and fear. These colors help paint the play of Paul’s life. He loathes his working class background taking his frustration out in school (Lindemann 134). He receives no moral support from the school or even his father who fails as a parent to understand him. Paul escapes to Carnegie Hall which had “all the allurement of a secret love” (Cather 235). He realizes “that the romantic illusions of the theatre cannot be sustained beyond its doors” (Lindemann 134). He attempts to make the illusion permanent, his imagined world a reality. He creates his own masterpiece that becomes real in its grand finale. Death is something solid that links his world to the real world.
Cather’s writing style is unique in this story. She does not just tell the story with words. She uses colors to vividly depict the emotions of Paul throughout the text. Yellow is associated with all that he hates especially his home: “Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing” as it gave him “that sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home” (Cather 232-233). “His ugly sleeping chamber; the cold bathroom with the grimy zinc tub, the cracked mirror, the dripping spiggots” (233), all came to his thoughts through the “horrible yellow wall-paper” (232) in his room. Paul feels threatened by these feelings, which reflect cowardice and fear. Paul desires to stand tall, fearless of his teachers and the common people of Cordelia Street, but is frightened of being weak (Carpenter-Houde). “He realized well enough that he had always been tormented by fear” (Cather 238), a fear which “had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter (238), under the strain of all he detested.
Paul dreams of a better world which is depicting by the color blue. He escapes the yellow ugliness of Cordelia Street to a blue dream world where he “fantasizes about the opera, romance, and the finer things that do not exist in his own life” (Carpenter-Houde). Music and art help Paul to lose himself “as he had done before the Rico” when the “instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within him”, granting him “a sudden zest of life” where “the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor” (Cather 231). Paul desired "to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything" (236), to float on the cloud of the accomplished and feel its magic change his world (Carpenter-Houde). “This blue dream world eventually makes it impossible for Paul to endure life in Pittsburgh and causes him to take drastic measures to fulfill his fantasies” (Carpenter-Houde), as he can no longer take “all the physical depression which follows a debauch” (Cather 233). Paul takes action against society by displaying the color red to show himself as “strong, confident and in control” (Carpenter-Houde). Red is the only color that links Paul’s imagined world to the real world. It represents him for who he is- a rebelling adolescent for reasons people can’t make out. His teachers can see the “red carnation in his buttonhole” which they felt “was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension” (Cather 229). Paul looks down on the teachers who are threatening him with suspension. He is not fazed by the verbal onslaught.
The red shows he is in control, as he acts “gracefully” but his mannerisms are merely “a repetition of the scandalous red carnation” (230). He is strong because “[o]lder boys than Paul had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, but his smile did not once desert him” (229-230). He is confident in his display as he “grinned” before being told he could leave (230), signaling he has full confidence he survived the questioning. Red portrays his contempt, arrogance and defiance to a society with middle-class values, declaring his independence from them but it is also symbolic of his materialistic attitude in his purchase of a red robe in New York (Carpenter-Houde). He saw his teachers as being part of a “flavorless, colorless mass of every-day existence” (Cather 233) as well as everyone else in Pittsburgh. He escapes to New York where the red carpet symbolizes his freedom (Carpenter-Houde). He realized the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nerve-stuff of all sensations was whirling about him like the snowflakes” (Cather 239). 
Purple symbolizes luxury, royalty and prosperity and is a disguise used by Paul to fit in with what he believes to be his people and the society he deserves to live in (Carpenter-Houde). He felt he belonged as “[h]e was now entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show himself different from his surroundings” and “[n]o-one questioned the purple; he only had to wear it passively” (Cather 240). Paul lives in this purple fantasy of royalty completely forgetting his past and accepting himself in his new role of nobility (Carpenter-Houde), but it can’t last forever as reality comes rushing back in the door knocking Paul back to the depression of Cordelia Street. He has depleted his small fortune living the dream but he is down to his last hundred dollars and he realizes the curtains are closing-he would have to make it a splendid grand finale: “[h]e 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….. all the world had become Cordelia Street (Cather 242).
The black weeds as Paul is driving out of town signify his approaching death (Carpenter-Houde). His carnations were fading in the cold, their red glory dying as “[i]t was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside” (Cather 242). “Life without color is more than merely the passing hues of a rainbow; it is a life without passion and meaning. Paul's life is a vibrant rainbow of expressions, creating and displaying a masterpiece of his own choosing” (Carpenter-Houde), but in the end he realizes that his revolt against the homilies by which the world is run is a losing game (Cather 242) and so he jumps in front of a train with “a frightened smile” (242) that says ‘they will remember me.’ I feel that this is not just a story about a boy, it is a story about a consumerist society whose materialistic ideals constrain people forcing them into a system that does not allow them to enjoy life. They simply could not survive without their jobs. Paul does not want to be taken over by this lifestyle. He wants to enjoy what life has to offer rebelling against social norms but he realizes that money is everything in a material world and without it he would fall back to the miserable working class environment of Cordelia Street. Paul’s death signifies the death of freedom and all beautiful things as there is no appreciation for them anymore in a society that only cares for money.
There was a clear relationship between the author and the story referring to Willa Cather’s adolescent years in Nebraska where she felt isolated and suppressed. She based the background in Pittsburgh where she worked. It is a good setting for the story as it depicts a working class society in the steel works that Cather was familiar with. In the end Paul’s obsession for material wealth and longing to be part of the upper-class caused his downfall. His lack of communication with everyone symbolizes his refusal to have anything to do with society as he is sickened by the constraints of his working class environment.
References
Carpenter-Houde, Rene. "Symbolism In "Paul's Case"." Hohonu A Journal Of Academic Writing. Board of Student Publications,University of Hawai'i at Hilo/Hawai'i Community College, 2010. Web. 25 Apr 2011. <http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/academics/hohonu/writing.php?id=49>.
Cather, Willa. “Paul’s Case” in Ann Charters’ The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 878-904. Print
Lindemann, Marilee. The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 134. Print.
Merriman, C.D. "Willa Cather-Biography and Works."The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., 2005. Web. 25 Apr 2011. <http://www.online-literature.com/willa-cather/>.
Sirridge, Marjorie S. "Cather, Willa: Paul's Case."Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. New York University, 2011. Web. 25 Apr 2011. <http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1227>.
Stout, Janis T. Willa Cather & Material Culture; Real-World Writing, Writing the Real World. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005. 3. Print.
