Paul's Case Book

Paul's Case is a short story and probably not as famous as some of Willa Cather's other writings, but it stuck out to me because I could understand the character and his rebellious nature against the society that was trying to force him do things that would make him become something that he despised. His teachers, as well as his father, wanted him to act "normal" and their versions of normal would have turned him into a man that grew up, married, had kids, and worked for the rest of his life, never seeing the world outside of his town. His rebelliousness was to the point of forcing hatred from his teachers, who then felt horribly for hating a pupil. They just didn't understand that he didn't want be like them and nothing they did was going to change that. He wanted to be his own person, not someone that was molded by his teachers and his father.
Paul's Case is the tragic story of a young boy who was just a little different than the other boys his age. He loved colorful, beautiful things, he enjoyed the theater as well as music, and he also wanted to travel. While the other kids were rather tame and "dull" by Paul's standards, he wanted to be something more. He wished to live the actors and singers that he saw at the theater. He wanted to see new places and people. He wanted to go to parties and socialize with who he viewed as important people. That is why he was always dropping the names of the actors he knew from working at the theater. I feel that this is a story of a boy who wants to be different than those around him in any way that he can. He disapproves of the way that they live and wants something different for himself even if that means that he will have to kill himself in order to not be like them. This is why he does everything that he can think of in order to distance himself from the lifestyle of the town. Including stealing money and physically running away from the town. He just wants to be somewhere else where he can become who he wants to be.
I find it interesting that Paul's father wants him to be like the young man whom I see as a man who "settled" and never really went for anything or took any risks in his life. A guy who married an older woman who was the first woman who came along, he got an all right job, and had four kids. Yet, this guy always talks about his boss who was on vacation on his yacht enjoying the world. The boss was probably someone who had taken a few chances in life and had come out on top. He would be the person that I would be telling my son to try to be more like because I would like my son to have the best. Just makes sense. This is what Paul really wanted to do anyway, he just doesn't seem sure how to reach that goal.
When Paul runs away to New York he begins to do all of the things that he has always wanted to do. He wears nice clothes around town trying to fit himself to the person he sees himself as. He goes to parties and meets people who are very different from the boring folk back home. He felt that these were the people he wanted to be. He believed that he was where he belonged. Paul felt that he had always been meant for this and that he should have never been in the dull town that he was from in the first place. This quote from the story best describes how he felt:

"This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged looking business men boarded the early car? Mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,−−sickening men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street−−Ah, that belonged to another time and country! Had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures, and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had."

While Paul is not the perfect model of a human being, I believe that Cather wants people to try to be little more like Paul in that we strive to be better than what other people want us to be and also try not to let those people tell us who we are and what we should do with our lives. (Don't stand in front of a train). I agree and I think that no one should allow themselves to forced to be someone they are not. Paul is a character who is constantly pushed by others into doing what they want and he bravely decided to get away from that and try somewhere else to be what he wanted. The means of getting there, however, were tragic.