Paul’s Case (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

The story opens in Pittsburgh, a city of hardheaded, steellike reality, where Paul, a boy from a middle-class family, is dismissed from high school because of his impertinent attitude and bearing. Paul sees his case as special. He perceives himself as above the middle-class ethic and bourgeois values of his neighborhood.

In asserting his superiority, Paul seeks to live in the world of the arts. He loves the theater, the opera, and music, even though he is not particularly artistic. The world of art and its external trappings--luxury hotels, midnight champagne, the finest clothes--represent Paul’s inarticulate aspirations, his desire to escape from his environment.

When Paul embezzles some money and flees to New York for a week of luxurious living, he both puts into action his own aspirations and sows the seeds of his own destruction. Once his crime is discovered, his father comes to New York to bring him back home. Paul realizes the futility of his flight, the impossibility of escaping into a better world. Despairing of a return to a world he loathes, Paul plunges back, by his suicide, into “the immense design of things.” It is this “design of things” that determines Paul’s fate.

Suggested Readings

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. Sexchanges. Vol. 2 in No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.

Wasserman, Loretta. Willa Cather: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twain, 1991.

Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.