[In the following essay, Crabtree considers the significance of flowers in “Paul's Case.”]

Critics frequently mention Paul's red carnation, in Willa Cather's short story “Paul's Case,” as a badge of “fidelity to his dream, his talisman” (Wasserman 125) or as a symbol of his alienation from the world (Randall 275). That analysis can be extended to include the story's frequent references to other flowers, which also symbolize Paul's desires and mirror his disconnection from the world. The expanded interpretation enhances the reader's understanding of Paul's fragility, his craving for beauty, and his inability to thrive in his environment.

Paul uses the red carnation as a visible symbol of his alienation from the world of Cordelia Street. Yet the symbol is misunderstood by his teachers, who see the flower as a vehicle of defiance. To them, the red carnation is not “properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension” (Cather 243), and this is reinforced later when they contend that Paul's “whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation” (244).

The bright color of the flower is in sharp contrast to Paul's drab surroundings, where the people “were as exactly alike as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived” (248). Paul despises the world he lives in and longs for “cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers” (248). His fantasies of escape always include flowers. Repulsed by the ugliness of his world, Paul believes that a certain element of artificiality is necessary in beauty (251). Just as the carnation he wears as an emblem thrives year-round in the artificial world of a greenhouse, Paul also feels alive only in artificial environments, such as the theater. With its artificial lights and vivid colors, the theater embodies all that Paul seeks, and his fantasy world of blossoms is suggested when “he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight” (251). At no other time in the story is a flower image used in which the flower holds the promise of fruition. However, Paul can never be a part of this world, and the carnation he wears, as it fades with time, demonstrates how unattainable his desires are. “[W]ithout talent or ambition to perform, he is forever separated from the glittering world he seeks to enter” (Rosowski 28). All other flowers in “Paul's Case” refer to cut flowers that, without roots, have no means of sustaining themselves, just as Paul's environment has no means of nourishing him.

Paul uses flowers as a means of connecting himself to the gleaming world he seeks. Even the stories he tells classmates of his acquaintance with exotic and sophisticated visiting soloists at the theater include mention of the flowers he sends these larger-than-life artists (Cather 252). Paul splashes water scented with violets on his hands after washing dishes so that he can be one step closer to his fantasy by distancing himself from the mundane chores associated with Cordelia Street. Thus, flowers repeatedly provide for Paul an avenue into the world he yearns to join. Just as the cut flowers once grew and thrived in a hothouse environment, Paul dreams of transplanting himself into a similarly nourishing environment.

Once Paul achieves his escape from Cordelia Street he seeks confirmation of his right to exist in the exciting world New York offers. Yet it is not until Paul has the bellboy bring up a bouquet that he finally feels that everything, including himself, is in its place (254). Paul notices the flowers on the tables when he goes to dinner and immediately feels a connection to the magnificence of the Waldorf's dining room. However, Paul remains merely a spectator in this fairy tale land, even as he roams the streets where he takes note of the flower shops filled with alluring blossoms (256). The blossoms in the flower shops cannot take root after being removed from their world, and neither can Paul establish roots in this artificial world he so desperately wishes to become a part of.

With reality nipping at his heels, Paul leaves the city behind. He realizes that just as his brief moment of glory is over, so too must the “splendid breath” of “the flowers he had seen in the show windows that first night” be gone (260). As Paul buries a blossom in the snow he acknowledges his own imminent “death in a cold world that holds no lasting home for him” (Arnold 183). With his own time growing as short as the ephemeral beauty of the flowers, Paul finds a permanent escape from a colorless life.

Works Cited

Arnold, Marilyn. “Two of the Lost.” Modern Critical Views: Willa Cather. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1985.

Cather, Willa. “Paul's Case.” Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction. Ed. Virginia Faulkner. Rev. ed. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970.

Randall, John H. The Landscape and the Looking Glass. Boston: Houghton, 1960.

Rosowski, Susan J. The Voyage Perilous. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986.

Wasserman, Loretta. “Is Cather's Paul a Case?” Modern Fiction Studies 36 (Spring 1990): 121-29.