To Show Your True Colors

Rebekah Phillips To Show Your True Colors… In “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather, symbolism is intricately used to expose the psychological levels of Paul’s psyche. The colors we find throughout the story are used to symbolize the different aspects of his personality, such as his hate for the society he lives in, his dream world, his rebellious spirit, and despair for his condition that ultimately leads to his death. Yellow, blue, red, and black are colors that Cather uses to depict her characters feelings and emotions, ultimately defining Paul and who he is. Yellow can be associated with many things, including disease and ugliness. In “Paul’s Case”, when contemplating returning home, he despises the thought of returning to his room which was coated in “horrible yellow wallpaper” (126). Even as he approaches it, he is filled with “a nerveless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home” (127). Paul sees himself as above his living situation and the yellow reveals how he feels when going home or having to endure living in such remedial, common, conditions. When thinking of returning to his room, he recalls the “ugly sleeping chamber, cold bathroom with the grimy zinc tub, the cracked mirror, and the dripping spigots” before ultimately deciding he would rather spend the night in the cellar before he would return there. The yellow wallpaper, in conjunction with the description of his room, describes in large his feelings about the society he lives in, which he shudders in repulsion at the mere thought of. The effect of these feelings and emotions are so overwhelming and overpowering that, once he realizes that the hold of his society on his life is inescapable and the “disease” of their every-day existence will catch up with him, he chooses instead to end his own life. Paul is often seen as a dreamer, his thoughts always drifting and imagining different scenarios. His dreams