Willa Cather's short story Paul's Case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Willa Cather's short story Paul's Case - Essay Example His work as an usher takes him away from his drab surroundings and into another world where the music reveals the "potent spirit within him". Paul's world is built upon untruths. Paul does not care to join in the world of music and drama; he is satisfied just to live vicariously through its proximity. Paul feasts off the efforts of others. For Paul the whole world is all lies, and the theater is one more of Paul's illusions. For Paul it was easy and necessary for overcoming the difficult task of effort. The theater is not only his escape from school, but also from Cordelia Street. Cordelia Street is the symbol of the "colorless mass of everyday existence". Paul can not subscribe to the middle class and could never be a clerk. He would never become one of the "rivets in the machine" that his father had. Paul wanted to be at the top "though he had no mind for the cash-boy stage". Paul needs more. Paul immerses himself in the drama of the theater with fanatical tales of his exaggerated importance. Fearing that Paul had wandered too far from the center of normality, his father demands that he be put to work. Alienated from school by the strict teachers, from home by his father's dismal existence and banished from the theater Paul creates a new illusion.