A Troubled Boy
“A Study in Temperament” by Willa Sibert Cather, taken from McClure’s Magazine called “Paul’s Case”, is about a troubled boy. The article was published in May of 1905, and in the story Cather takes us through a few days in this boy’s life. The story opens with Paul, the main character, that was suspended from school. He manages to alienate his teachers and his peers at school, as well. The main character seems to dislike his family and general living conditions. The one thing Paul seems to enjoy is his job as an usher at Carnegie Hall. He loves the performances and seems to shine during the moments he is working there. To deal with his discontent with his life, he begins to tell grandiose lies that further alienate him from …show more content…
The author may have wished to create an understanding or even evoke empathy for people who experience such a level of unhappiness, to show that they are not comfortable being themselves. This piece does have social significance, Cather wrote this story and others for McClure Magazine, and her audience was contemporary women of that time. Since women of that generation were generally home raising their children, this story could help any mother dealing with a child who had some kind of mental illness. Despite the fact that Cather was a Pulitzer Prize winner, her work was dismissed as romantic and nostalgic; it was felt she could not cope with the present. Critics such as “Granville Hicks charged Cather with failing to confront contemporary life as it is and escaping into an idealized past” (Obrien 246). This is a fair description of the main character in “Paul’s Case”. The period in history this story was written in came at a time in the writer’s own life just before she moved to New York City herself. It is possible some of her own longings to live a life surrounded by all the exciting on-goings of a city like New York City went into the story of “Paul’s Case,” and, were more appealing to her imagination than the life she herself was living. No doubt the writer used some of her own feelings about life when writing this
“A Study in Temperament” by Willa Sibert Cather, taken from McClure’s Magazine called “Paul’s Case”, is about a troubled boy. The article was published in May of 1905, and in the story Cather takes us through a few days in this boy’s life. The story opens with Paul, the main character, that was suspended from school. He manages to alienate his teachers and his peers at school, as well. The main character seems to dislike his family and general living conditions. The one thing Paul seems to enjoy is his job as an usher at Carnegie Hall. He loves the performances and seems to shine during the moments he is working there. To deal with his discontent with his life, he begins to tell grandiose lies that further alienate him from …show more content…
The author may have wished to create an understanding or even evoke empathy for people who experience such a level of unhappiness, to show that they are not comfortable being themselves. This piece does have social significance, Cather wrote this story and others for McClure Magazine, and her audience was contemporary women of that time. Since women of that generation were generally home raising their children, this story could help any mother dealing with a child who had some kind of mental illness. Despite the fact that Cather was a Pulitzer Prize winner, her work was dismissed as romantic and nostalgic; it was felt she could not cope with the present. Critics such as “Granville Hicks charged Cather with failing to confront contemporary life as it is and escaping into an idealized past” (Obrien 246). This is a fair description of the main character in “Paul’s Case”. The period in history this story was written in came at a time in the writer’s own life just before she moved to New York City herself. It is possible some of her own longings to live a life surrounded by all the exciting on-goings of a city like New York City went into the story of “Paul’s Case,” and, were more appealing to her imagination than the life she herself was living. No doubt the writer used some of her own feelings about life when writing this