درآمدی بر ادبیات (PERRINES’s literature: structure, sound and sense fiction)
درآمدی بر ادبیات (PERRINES’s literature: structure, sound and sense fiction)
Paul’s case
Summary, analysis and ……
plot
Paul has been suspended from his high school in Pittsburgh. As the story opens, he arrives at a meeting with the school’s faculty members and principal. He is dressed in clothes that are simultaneously shabby and debonair. The red carnation he wears in his buttonhole particularly offends the faculty members, who think the flower sums up Paul’s flippant attitude. Paul is tall and narrow-shouldered, with enlarged pupils that remind one of a drug addict’s eyes.
The faculty members have a difficult time articulating their true feelings about Paul. Deep down, they believe that Paul loathes, feels contempt for, and is repulsed by them. They lash out at Paul, but he betrays no emotion. Instead, he smiles throughout the barrage of criticism. After Paul leaves, the drawing master says aloud that Paul’s mother died in Colorado just after Paul was born. Privately, the drawing master remembers seeing Paul asleep one day in class and being shocked at his aged appearance. As the teachers depart, they feel embarrassed about their viciousness toward Paul.
Paul goes straight to Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh, where he works as an usher. Because he is early, he goes to the Hall’s gallery and looks at paintings of Paris and Venice. He loses himself in one particular painting, a “blue Rico.” After changing in the dressing room, where he roughhouses with the other ushers, Paul begins to work. He is excellent at his job, performing every aspect of it with great enthusiasm. He is annoyed when his English teacher arrives and he must seat her, but he comforts himself with the knowledge that her clothes are inappropriate for so fancy a venue.
The symphony begins, and Paul loses himself in the music. As he listens, he feels full of life. After the performance, he trails the star soprano to her hotel, the Schenley, and imagines vividly that he is following her inside the luxurious building. As if awaking from a dream, Paul realizes that he is actually standing in the cold, rainy street. He dreads returning to his room, with its ugly knickknacks and pictures of John Calvin and George Washington.
As he reaches Cordelia Street, where he lives, Paul feels depressed and repulsed by the commonness and ordinariness of his middle-class neighborhood. Unable to face his father, Paul sneaks into the basement, where he stays awake all night imagining what would happen if his father mistook him for a burglar and shot him—or recognized Paul in time, but later in life wished that he had shot his son.
The next day, Paul sits on the porch with his sisters and father. Many people are outside, relaxing. It is a pleasant scene, but Paul is disgusted by it. His father chats with a young clerk whom he hopes Paul will emulate. This clerk took his boss’s advice: he married the first woman he could and began having children immediately. The only tales of business that interest Paul are those of the iron magnates’ expensive adventures in Cairo, Venice, and Monte Carlo. He understands that some “cash boys” (low-level employees) eventually find great success, but he does not enjoy thinking about the initial cash-boy work.
After managing to get carfare from his father by pretending that he needs to study with a friend, Paul goes to see Charley Edwards, a young actor who lets Paul hang around his dressing room and watch rehearsals. The narrator notes that Paul’s mind has not been “perverted” by novels, as his teachers suspect. Rather, Paul gets pleasure solely from theater and music, which are the only things that make him feel alive.
At school, Paul tells outrageous lies about his close friendships with the members of the theater company and the stars who perform at Carnegie Hall. Paul’s effort to prove that he is better than his classmates and teachers winds up alienating him from them. In the end, the principal speaks with Paul’s father, and Paul is forbidden to return to school, Carnegie Hall, or the theater where Charley Edwards works. The theater company’s members hear about Paul’s lies and find them comical. Their lives are difficult, not the glamorous dream worlds that Paul imagines.
Paul takes an overnight train and arrives in New York City, where he buys expensive clothes, hats, and shoes. After purchasing silver at Tiffany’s, he checks into the Waldorf, paying for his rooms in advance. The eighth-floor rooms are nearly perfect. All that’s missing are flowers, which Paul sends a bellboy out to buy. The narrator explains what has happened to make all this possible: Paul got a job with Denny & Carson’s, and when asked to take a deposit to the bank, he deposited only the checks and pocketed $1,000 in cash. He is using this stolen money to fund his spree in New York.
After a nap, Paul takes a carriage ride up Fifth Avenue. He notices banks of flowers, bright and vibrant, protected by glass from the snow. He dines at the hotel while listening to an orchestra play the Blue Danube. He feels utterly content. The next day, Paul meets a rich boy who attends Yale. The two of them enjoy a night on the town, staying out until 7 a.m. The narrator notes that although the boys begin the evening in a happy mood, they end it in a bad one.
A lovely week passes, and then Paul finds that his theft has been discovered and reported by the Pittsburgh newspapers. According to the stories, his father has paid back the $1,000 and is headed to New York to find his son. Paul enjoys one last dinner at the Waldorf. The next morning, he wakes up, hung over, and looks at the gun he purchased on his first day in New York. In the end, he takes cabs to a set of railroad tracks in Pennsylvania and leaps in front of an oncoming train. Before he dies, he recognizes “the folly of his haste” and thinks of the places that he will never see.
Character List
Paul - The protagonist and antihero of the story. An idealistic, lying, suicidal young man, Paul fits in nowhere and looks down on nearly everyone he knows. He is class-conscious and reserves his approval for rich people and those involved in the art world. Desperate for both acceptance and superiority over others, he lies about his friendships with actors to make himself seem important. He ends his life after stealing money and spending it all on a lavish spree in New York City.
Paul’s Father - An unnamed widower. Paul’s father, in Paul’s view, is simply a potential disciplinarian. However, Cather portrays Paul’s father as a deeply generous man who provides for his children and looks after their well-being. His concern about Paul’s troubles in school, his willingness to pay back the $1,000 Paul stole, and his quest for his vanished son all demonstrate his deep kindness.
Charley Edwards - A young actor in a Pittsburgh theater troupe. Charley Edwards allows Paul to hang out backstage, help him with his costumes, and observe rehearsals. However, when Paul is forbidden to return to Carnegie Hall, Charley agrees not to see him anymore. Cather hints that Charley may recognize and share Paul’s homosexual tendencies.
The Soprano - A German singer. To Paul, the soprano seems to be a highly romantic figure, when in fact she is a middle-aged mother. This gap between perception and reality is typical of Paul, who idealizes what he does not understand. The soprano also lives (at least in Paul’s mind) a life of glamour and beauty that Paul craves. Her stay at the Schenley, a posh hotel, may inspire Paul’s flight to the Waldorf in New York.
The Drawing Master - One of the faculty members. The drawing master defends Paul to the other teachers, positing that he is disturbed rather than simply rude. He makes the only mention of Paul’s dead mother in the story and worries about Paul’s physical weakness.
The English Teacher - One of the faculty members. The English teacher is keenly aware of the contempt Paul feels for her and the other teachers. She knows that he has a “physical aversion” to her that he cannot control, and this knowledge hurts her feelings. She spearheads the attack against Paul during the meeting. Later, when she attends the symphony at Carnegie Hall, she covers her confusion at encountering Paul by acting snobby.
The Young Clerk - A twenty-six-year-old man held up as an example by Paul’s father. The clerk embodies everything Paul wants to avoid in his own life. He married an unattractive woman, fathered four children, lives on Cordelia Street, and brags about his boss, a steel magnate.
The Yale Student - A rich boy from San Francisco. Something unmentionable happens between Paul and the Yale student, who spend a night out on the town together in New York. The narrator says only that they part on bad terms, without explaining why. It is possible that a sexual encounter, or an attempt at one, soured their friendship.
Analysis of Major Characters
Paul moves through his world awkwardly, never truly fitting in anywhere or ever feeling comfortable in his own skin. He is obsessed with art, theater, and music, and his job as an usher at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh allows him to indulge these obsessions. Paul has an unrealistic idea that the art world is an ideal fantasyland, and he uses art as a sort of drug to escape his dreary existence. He has no desire to join the art world he admires; rather, he wants to sit back and observe other people. Paul feels contempt for his teachers, classmates, neighbors, and family members, all of whom he sees as hopelessly narrow-minded. Besides art, Paul is also obsessed with money. He longs to be rich and believes that great wealth is his destiny. Because of his selfishness and desperation to escape his own unspectacular life, Paul lies constantly, sometimes to get out of a sticky situation and sometimes to impress his classmates and teachers. Cather makes it clear that Paul has homosexual tendencies, although it is not clear whether he acknowledges or acts upon them. He feels alienated from society because of his homosexuality and general disdain for other people.
Paul’s self-destructive impulses intensify throughout the story. At first, he wishes to escape life by submerging himself in art. When Paul stands outside the soprano’s house and listens to the symphony, Cather’s language suggests his longing for oblivion. He wants to let art take him away, “blue league after blue league, away from everything.” Paul spends an entire night imagining what would happen if his father took him for a burglar and shot him. More disturbingly, he also imagines what would happen if his father one day regretted not killing him. The implication is that Paul assumes that he will fail and disgust his father so drastically that his father will wish him dead. Toward the end of the story, we learn that Paul bought a gun when he arrived in New York because even at the outset of his adventure, he foresaw that he might need “a way to snap the thread.” Several times, the narrator mentions a darkness in Paul, a fear that he has felt since he was a child. Paul ultimately commits suicide not because of one event or character trait. Rather, all his reasons for unhappiness, loneliness, and alienation converge and lead him to his decision to leap in front of a train.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Danger of Misunderstanding Money
Paul is obsessed with money, and his belief that money will solve all his problems leads to unrelenting disappointment in his life. He thinks almost constantly about the humiliation of those who have little money and the power wielded by those who possess lots of it. He keenly analyzes his own slightly impoverished existence and hates every detail: cramped houses, grubby bathrooms, simple clothes, women’s inelegant conversations, and men’s worshipful attitude toward their bosses. He believes that money is the one way out of the existence he loathes. But it becomes clear that Paul will never become one of the prosperous men he idealizes because he has no understanding of the relationship between work and money. The narrator points out that there are boys like Paul who started at the bottom of the ladder and worked their way up until they became kings. Paul’s father and the young clerk discuss just such men as Paul listens on the front porch. But while Paul is fascinated by the exotic haunts and exploits of these rich men, he has no interest at all in the “cash-boy stage” of their lives, those first days when they were as poor as he is. He longs for the spoils of hard work but cannot conceive of doing the hard work that leads to the spoils.
Paul views the small economies of his neighbors disdainfully, believing that only he understands the best way of building wealth. The fathers around him pinch pennies and pass on their thrifty ways to their children, taking pleasure in their skill with arithmetic and ability to accumulate coins in piggybanks. Paul sneers at this petty fixation on money, not understanding that the careful accumulation of funds is the best chance that he or anyone in his neighborhood has of moving up in the world. He believes that some people are born rich and others are born poor and dismisses the idea that in America, the boundaries between the two groups are fluid. Paul further believes that he was meant to be rich and that only by some terrible mistake was he born poor. Because Paul is so certain that he was destined for wealth, it comes as no surprise when he steals $1,000 in cash from his company. In some sense, he feels that he deserves money without working for it. In the end, Paul’s obsession with money and failure to understand it are key causes of his downfall.
The Addictive Nature of Art
In “Paul’s Case,” art acts as a dangerous drug, and Paul’s addiction to it causes him endless problems. Although Paul feels happiest and most alive when he is surrounded by art—at the theater, listening to music, or gazing at paintings—his happiness is an illusion because he does not truly understand what he sees. Instead, he consumes art voraciously and unthinkingly, as if it is an addictive drug. For example, the narrator writes that although the music at Carnegie Hall means nothing to Paul, he loves it because it lets loose “some hilarious and potent spirit within him.” This phrase describes an involuntary but highly pleasurable reaction, similar to the reaction inspired by addiction.
Much as addicts use their drug of choice to escape their everyday lives, Paul uses art to escape his own consciousness. When he gazes at the painting in the Carnegie Hall gallery and again when he listens to the symphony, he is described as losing himself. The aftermath, however, is ugly, and Paul is shaken and irritable after his bouts with the arts. His high does not linger, and coming down from it is difficult. Cather emphasizes Paul’s unintellectual response to art by pointing out that he does not read novels. He avoids books, the narrator says, because “he got what he wanted much more quickly from music.” Just like an addict in search of a fix, Paul needs to consume art as easily and fast as he can. Anything that requires sustained concentration or intellectual appreciation, such as novels, is too time-consuming. Theater, music, and paintings provide Paul with instant, though shallow, gratification.
The Alienation of Homosexuals
Cather suggests strongly that Paul has homosexual leanings that make his life difficult and contribute to how alienated he feels from others. Modern readers might find her portrait of his homosexuality shallow and uncomfortably stereotypical: Paul is petrified by rats, splashes cologne on himself, and is fastidious about odors and dirt. The only woman who interests Paul is the soprano he sees at Carnegie Hall, a middle-aged woman described as “the mother of many children” and a clear substitute for Paul’s own deceased mother. The prospect of heterosexual relations seems to repulse Paul. He is unsettled, for example, by the young clerk’s marriage to a nearsighted schoolmistress and by the couple’s four children. Paul is most interested in boys. He tussles with the other young ushers at the theater and latches on to Charley Edwards, who allows Paul to help him dress for performances. The narrator notes that Charley thinks Paul has a vocation. The kind of vocation is not specified, and we infer that Paul has an affinity both for the theater and for men, as does Charley.
Paul’s homosexuality makes him feel deeply alienated from society. Although he seems to achieve a certain acceptance from a few groups and individuals, the details are so vague that we can assume the acceptance was hardly overt or fulfilling. He has no close friends, and the narrator suggests that his advances are often rebuffed. When Paul meets the rich student from Yale, he makes a brief connection, and the two share a wild night out on the town. But although their friendship begins with “confiding warmth,” they part coldly. The narrator describes this change in the space of one sentence, which suggests how quickly the tone of the relationship goes from hot to cold. It is possible that the change occurs because Paul made a pass at the Yale student and was turned down. It is also possible that the two boys shared an encounter that left both of them embarrassed and upset. Whatever happened, Paul is again left alone, and the stage is set for his solitary descent into despair.
Motifs
Colors
Cather often uses colors to suggest personality and mood. Yellow is associated with the repulsion Paul feels for his home. After following the soprano to her hotel, he dreads returning to his room with its yellow wallpaper. Later, surrounded by luxury at the Waldorf, he thinks with horror of that yellow wallpaper. The young clerk is associated with red. His face and mouth are red, which reflects his formerly wild nature, now tamed by his conventional life. Riches are associated with the color purple. Paul scorns his teachers for failing to decorate their buttonholes with purple violets, as rich people might. He orders violets and jonquils for his rooms at the Waldorf. He is happy during dinner in the hotel, feeling that no one will question “the purple”—that is, that no on will question his masquerade as a rich boy.
Cather uses white and blue to portray Paul himself. His teeth, lips, and face are pale, which suggests his emotional strain. White is also a positive color for him: white snow often falls during his days in New York, where he is happiest. The drawing master notices the blue veins on Paul’s face. Paul loses himself in the “blue Venetian scene or two” and the “blue Rico” in the gallery, and listens to the Blue Danube at the Waldorf. He longs to let art carry him away into a blue sea. The two colors combine in his imagination. The theater is described as Paul’s “bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore,” and he thinks of the sea just before he dies.
Food
Mentions of food as well as the smell and preparation of it recur throughout “Paul’s Case.” Paul associates nauseating food with his house on Cordelia Street. After following the soprano to her hotel, he feels revulsion at the thought of ordinary food and scent of cooking spread throughout a house. The narrator describes Paul’s ordinary life as a “flavorless, colorless mass,” a phrase that would apply equally well to an unappetizing plate of food. Paul is also disgusted by the dishtowels and dishwater that must be used to clean plates dirtied by food. Before visiting Charley Edwards, he tries to rid his fingers of the smell of dishwater by putting cologne on them.
Although the food of his own people repulses Paul, the food of rich people tantalizes him. He pores over pictures of fancy dinner parties in magazines and imagines the delicious food and drink the soprano will enjoy in her hotel. Once he reaches the Waldorf, he is overwhelmed by the dining room’s beauty and amazing sight of champagne frothing in his glass. In fact, food is not mentioned in the description of Paul’s first dinner at the Waldorf. It is as if the most genteel food hardly has any smell at all. During that first dinner, Paul can hardly believe that he comes from a place where the men’s clothes smell like food.
Symbols
Red Carnations
The red carnations Paul often wears in his buttonhole represent Paul himself. At the beginning of the story, when Paul wears a red carnation to meet his teachers and principal, the adults correctly interpret its presence as evidence of Paul’s continued defiance. They want him to show remorse, but the jaunty flower proves that he feels none. At the end of the story, Paul buys red carnations. As he walks to the train tracks, he notices that they have wilted in the cold. He buries one of the flowers in the snow before leaping in front of a train. The carnation’s burial is a symbolic prelude to Paul’s actual suicide.