In the story Paul's Case, Paul grows up despising his middle-class neighborhood with tedious and boring patterns of living. After his mother’s death, his strict and abusive father brought him up which mentally affects him. All things together plant a seed of extreme contempt in his mind towards his home and his society. It also evokes his thoughts to build up his stories of his own desires to stand against and separate from the society. His insolent and rebellious behavior throughout the story speaks of the disgust he feels towards the authority figures. His characteristics altogether points us to analyze the reason of his suicide. In Willa Cather’s Paul’s Case, Paul’s suicide is a result of the combination of intolerant society, the immature teenage thinking as well as the feeling of
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Willa Cather once wrote, “a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies” (Cather 237). Cather spent most of her life in Nebraska and moved to Pittsburg after graduation. In Pittsburg in early 1900s, there occurred an incident which was the foundation around which Paul’s Case was constructed. Two boys working at a firm that managed large estate, stole two thousand dollars. Ten days later they were found in Chicago at the Auditorium Hotel. This was the incident that stirred Cather’s thoughts over the matter. An article “from Willa Cather in Person: Interview, Speeches and Letters” at Willa Cather Archives, states her own words regarding the incident, “I never knew before there were so many madmen at large” (Bohlke). These words certainly reflect how that incident evoked the character of Paul in Cather’s mind. The word ‘madmen’ used by Cather proves that she thought of those two boys psychologically unstable. We can see, as a reflection of those two boys, Paul was no doubt a fictional embodiment of a psychologically disturbed
Willa Cather once wrote, “a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies” (Cather 237). Cather spent most of her life in Nebraska and moved to Pittsburg after graduation. In Pittsburg in early 1900s, there occurred an incident which was the foundation around which Paul’s Case was constructed. Two boys working at a firm that managed large estate, stole two thousand dollars. Ten days later they were found in Chicago at the Auditorium Hotel. This was the incident that stirred Cather’s thoughts over the matter. An article “from Willa Cather in Person: Interview, Speeches and Letters” at Willa Cather Archives, states her own words regarding the incident, “I never knew before there were so many madmen at large” (Bohlke). These words certainly reflect how that incident evoked the character of Paul in Cather’s mind. The word ‘madmen’ used by Cather proves that she thought of those two boys psychologically unstable. We can see, as a reflection of those two boys, Paul was no doubt a fictional embodiment of a psychologically disturbed