Answer Happy

Reading Questions for "Paul's Case" 1. Describe Paul's personality as the author sets it forth in the opening paragraph of the story. What has caused the conflict between Paul and his teachers? What does Cather do to establish the reader's sympathy for Paul? What limits that sympathy? 2. How should we understand and interpret Paul's uneasiness and restlessness? What is he fighting against and fighting for? Why does he have to tell lies? Once he leaves for New York, has he succeeded in escaping the world he loathes? Or do you think his escape inevitably becomes a form of self destruction? 3. Discuss the three worlds--school, Carnegie Hall, and Cordelia Street--in which Paul moves. Is there any significance for them to be introduced in that order? Explore the allusion embodied in the name "Cordelia Street." Why does Paul feel he is drowning there? Once he is in New York, he contrasts New York with Cordelia Street several times. Why does he do that? What do we know of Paul, his aspiration, frustration, contentment, and disappointment against these different places? 4. "Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain elements of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty...." To what extent does this paragraph offer a key to the story's structure and theme? 5. What is admirable about Paul's entry and sojourn in New York? What is missing from his new life? On the morning of his suicide, Paul recognizes that "money was everything." How much is he a victim of this realization? 6. What is the effect of Paul's burying his Carnation in the n\snow? of his last thought? You may recall that when he first appears in front of his teachers he also wears "a red. carnation in his buttonhole." What is the meaning of these references to the carnation?