Paul's Case By Willa Cather: The Cost Of Freedom And Peace

Carrie Henry
Jeff Chan
Comp II-1302
Paper One / Draft One
4 June 2014
The Cost of Freedom and Peace In the story “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather, we are given an insight to Paul’s life of supposed unhappiness and how he will go to an extreme to find peace and be happy, no matter the cost. The rising action and plot points begin right away in this story when it starts by showing us the trouble Paul is having and causing at school. Exposition and plot points are introduced throughout the first half of the story as we learn about his home, school life, likes, dislikes and enemies, which to Paul his enemies and dislikes are his teachers and school. Paul is the main character in this story who has a serious dislike of his schoolteachers
just as much as they do for him. He has a serious passion for music and theatre, which he fulfills by working at the Carnegie Hall and while being there, he is at a temporary peace since he is away from his school and home life. Eventually, we see some more serious rising action and tension when his father takes him out of school after too many issues and forces him to quit the job he held so dearly at the Carnegie Hall. After all of that, Cather incorporates a flash-forward with more plot points where he is suddenly on a train, headed to the east.
He is now spending money like crazy on clothes, shoes, hats, luggage, flowers, silver and expensive hotel rooms, and even silk underwear. Paul is now at peace and living, as he had never lived before. There is a temporary flashback of sorts when we learn of what happened between his father making him quit Carnegie Hall and him being on the train, to spending money like a mad man. We learn in this temporary flashback that he had stolen a couple thousand dollars from someone who he regularly made deposits to the bank for back home. Instead of depositing the money this time, he slipped it all into his pocket. Now for a short moment, he seems to be at conflict with himself and feels a bit remorseful, but only for a moment. Paul admits to himself that what had held him back for so long was his own fear, which he has since released and overcome and is now living
carefree. Nearing the end of the story, we quickly approach the top of the rising action.
On the eighth day, his arrival to New York is met with the crime he committed being all over the papers; only to find out that his father had paid the debt, was coming to retrieve him and bring him home, and the people from whom he stole the money weren’t pressing charges. Despite reminding himself several times that, “it had paid” to do what he had done, he becomes depressed; making mention of a revolver he had in his possession, and taking a taxi to the tracks where he had them drop him off in the middle of nowhere. At this point, tensions are high and the reader is probably anticipating exactly where this is headed. He situates himself atop a hillside where the train tracks go through and falls asleep, only to be awaken to the sound of an approaching trains whistle. In a full on climax, we can feel Paul’s fear but calmness as he prepares himself to jump at just the right time as to get struck by the train to his death, leaving no room falling action. In this particular story, one could also argue that Paul jumping to his death could be seen as both the climax and resolution just as equally so. By Paul jumping to his death, he is now at peace and left to run, hide, and search for peace no
more. The central idea of the story is that everyone wants to be at peace, and when that peace is taken from, tainted or disturbed, we must find a way to get it back, maybe in a different form than it first was, and some are willing to go further than others to get that peace. Cather makes this very clear as a central idea by showing us how peaceful he was at the Carnegie Hall, that he was even willing to lie to his dad to go there, and said that he was going to do homework. On a few different occasions, reference is made of this peace while there by saying, “When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh of relief…..” and “When the soprano soloist came on, Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teacher’s being there…” He was content with his job and the peace it brought over him, and when his dad took that away from him, he freaked out and went across country after stealing a large amount of money. Regardless the fact that the peace he found may have been an illusion and a temporary one, he filled that void from the lack of Carnegie Hall by spending money carelessly and freely. When Paul discovered that the new peace he had created was soon to end if his father had found him and took him back home, he decided to take his own life because he saw any form of desirable peace over with from then on.

Works Cited
Cather, Willa. "Paul 's Case." 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2001. 101-19. Print.