The Struggle In 'Paul's Case'

“Paul’s Case” is set around the 1930’s at the peak of the American Industrial expansion where the American dream consisted of the ultimate attainment of wealth and power with an immense value on material belongings. Paul, the main character, is a high school boy who is ferociously trying to overcome the boring and mundane life of conformity that he is being forced to live. He wants luxuries, admiration, and power, but is not willing to go through the journey that society has established and instead decides to take the hasty path and embezzle money from his employer. After doing so, he immediately flees to New York City, where he lives the ultimate life, the life that completely fulfills him. His affluence, however, only lasts for a few days …show more content…
This first encourages the reader to think of Paul as a troublesome child whose sole purpose is to make other’s life an uphill battle. He is presented as an abnormally compulsive liar and an arrogant teen that hates school and everyone around him. Later, however, the reader is presented with Paul’s own psychological conflict with himself and society. He regards himself as a person whom society does not deserve to have within the common people. He thinks of others around him as pitiful people who have no desire to get more than the scraps that are thrown to them not beyond their average and uninteresting life. Paul, however, also has a hidden conflict within that prevents him from being accountable for his mistakes and for his lack of effort in making changes towards the life that he deserves. However, the clashing of the contending sides of the conflict further exemplify the polarized differences between them and the ultimate impossibility of them surviving …show more content…
Someone internal to the story would likely be more biased towards themselves and in turn the focus would be swayed towards their advantage. More specifically, if it were by Paul himself, the narration would sound more like a diary about his personal disgust of others and of the grandeur of the life he ought to deserve. The reader would feel more connected to him while at the same time feel the same disregard he has towards others portrayed on to the readers. This change would arise because of the vast amount of detail that only Paul can provide to the story and no one else would be brought to light. He could bring alive the events that are vaguely described and could bring about new important characteristics about himself. Contrarily, a narrator completely aside of the story without any insight on the thoughts of any character would be very simplistic in the amount of detail it could provide and would ultimately be either very hard for the reader to understand the conflict or it would completely change the story’s