Paul's Case: The Unconventional Desire for Wealth

In Paul’s Case, Willa Cather writes about a young man's unhappiness with his lifestyle, he is awkward, does not fit into his skin different and does not fit into society,his desire to have to more than what he already and to leave Cornelia street to live a lifestyle of wealth, Cather characterizes Paul as very awkward and as someone that does not fit into the normal norms of society. He was not close to his family and had no friends at school or outside of school. At the biggin on the story we are reading in the third person point of view and we are hearing how his his teachers see paul and are discussing about his weird ways and actions.“I don't really believe that smile of his comes altogether from insolence, “he says. “There's something

sort of haunted about it. The boy is not strong, for one thing. I happen to know that he was born in Colorado, only a few months before his mother died out there of a long illness. There is something wrong about the fellow" (paragraph 4).
His father expects him to become someone that he does not want to be.

On the Sunday afternoon paul and his family were talking the young man about his work and about the exciting and exuberant life of his boss, paul sited that he wanted all the same experiences as the man's’ boss but he had no desire for part where one had to work hard for such lifestyle,wants to be rich without actually working hard and earning it for himself, “yet he rather liked to hear these legends of the iron kings that were told and retold on Sundays and holidays; these stories of palaces in Venice, yachts on the Mediterranean, and high play at Monte Carlo appealed to his fancy, and he was interested in the triumphs of these cash boys who had become famous, though he had no mind for the cash-boy stage”(paragraph 25).He believes that one can not climb up higher in life, but that one can only be born into that society. When he had the opportunity to steal the money from the company he was working, Paul did not think twice about taking the money and running away with it “Not once, but a hundred times, Paul had planned this entry into New York. He had gone over every detail of it with Charley Edwards, and in his scrap book at home there were pages of description about New York hotels, cut from the Sunday papers”(paragraph

).
When he goes to goes to his job at Carnegie hall as a usher before he goes into the art gallery where he goes to escape his reality, he has no desire to be a part of the art world, he just goes there to get lost and escape his life. When he wanted to be part of the wealthy world so much that he did not think twice about stealing the money from the company he was working at and leave for New York. He had finally gotten to leave Cornelia Street.

Paul's stay in new york is symbolized by the flowers in the case that he sees when he is walking around the city. At the beginning the flowers are fresh and beautiful but towards the end of the essay they are withering and ugly. Just like the flowers, at the time of his arrival Paul had bought many new clothing items, and accessories to fit into the life he long desired to live in, he was fresh and new to the world of high society. “The flowers, the white linen, the many-coloured wine glasses, the gay toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra, all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance.”(paragraph ). But as the week went on his father was informed of his actions and he knew that eventually he would run of the money that he needed to support this new lifestyle.