An Analysis of Willa Cather's story

Most people have a happy capability to adapt to life conditions , both to material and moral ones . Such flexibility is essential to survival . If you succeed to attach meaning and feeling to your everyday routine , then you have a chance to stay in harmony with your personality . Otherwise a dramatic split may occur , which would break your life into two halves - the one you want to live and the one you have to . How can this contradiction be solved ? A short story Paul 's Case by on of the prominent women Willa

Cather raises an important issue of a rebellion against the dullness of everyday life

What are the roots of this revolt ? As is often happens , a person 's inner problems and conflicts originate from the family . With the title character , Paul , it is the same . His mother died just a short period after his birth , so he grew up without motherly care . He has a father with whom he cannot find emotional contact . His father for him is just an alien figure , which is looking from upstairs with reproaching air There is not a spark of understanding between the two so much different are their pictures of life . The atmosphere in the house , including that of Paul 's room , is the reflection of his father 's personality . Surface wretchedness and ugliness reveal the in-depth lack of spirituality demonstrated by his father . Paul has no warm spot both inside and around him , which could be called home . There is no sign of privacy in his room with pictures of Calvin and Washington instead of usual happy family photos . Not only Paul sees indifference and misunderstanding in his father but he also senses some hidden irrational aggression . That is why he descends to a cellar , as if to the darkness of the unconscious and meditates : suppose his father had come down , pistol in hand , and he had cried out in time to save himself , and his father had been horrified to think how nearly he had killed him ? Then , again , suppose a day should come when his father would remember that night , and wish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand

Paul 's alienation from his father set a model for his relationship with the outward world in general . The boy 's interaction with the world is devoid of affection or any human feeling at all . What he sees is only an ugly carcass of life without flesh , that 's why the word deadly ' is repeated so often . The boy only sees empty meaningless patterns of behavior and conventional scenarios of his life , written by someone else . His contempt towards his classmates and teachers has nothing personal in it , for he sees them as part of routine , of the grey mass which cannot be private or personal by definition . The world 's reaction to his attitude is ambiguous . The teachers cannot help feeling humiliated by the absolute absence of respect to common values or to them...