“Paul’s Case”
Willa Cather
1. What is the importance of each of the following:
a. Red carnation
b. Cordelia Street
c. Charley Edwards
d. Carnegie Hall
e. Pictures in Paul’s room
f. Windows
2. . Why is Charley Edwards the only character in the story with a first and a last
name?
3. What facts do we know about Paul? His physical features? His height, his clothes,
his face, his peculiarities?
4. What significance is there to the scene in the dressing room? Why does Paul
tease the boys? What do you think he teased them about? Why do the boys
“suppress him” by sitting on him?
5. Throughout episodes at school, the gallery, the theater, and outside the theater,
Paul watches and looks at people and things. What does this reveal about him?
6. How does Paul’s diction reveal his feelings toward his home?
7. Why does he enter his house through the basement window?
8. How is the reality of the need for money brought in throughout the story?
9. What are Paul’s attitudes toward women in the story? Think of his sisters, his
English teacher, Venus de Milo, the soprano, the women in the stock company,
the women on Cordelia Street.
10. What is meant by the stock women’s saying that “Paul’s was a bad case?”
11. Throughout the story, Paul is looking around him apparently afraid. What is he
afraid of?
12. Note the times words referring to water are mentioned. What is the meaning of
these repetitions? (tide, wash, streams, floods).
13. Why does Paul go to New York and not Boston or London?
14. The snow is described as “whirling” most of the time. Why? Does this word
choice suggest something about Paul?
15. Paul is nervous when he sees that no flowers are in his hotel room. What added
meaning does this give to flowers?
16. Paul notices the flowers under glass as he rides through New York and notices
that they are more beautiful under glass. He believes that “artificial” is more
beautiful than “real.” What does this reveal about his feelings toward himself?
17. What does the episode retracing Paul’s theft of the money reveal about him?
18. How is the freshman from Yale a contrast to Paul?
19. Why does Paul’s father go after him?
20. What is the change in Paul after he reads the news as compared to before.
21. When Paul is sitting in the basement of his house he contemplates the reactions of
his father if, accidentally, his father would shoot him. Then, knowing his father is
coming East, Paul decides to “finish the thing splendidly.” Is his suicide part of
his original plan, or only decided when he knows his father will take him back?
22. What does “all the world has become Cordelia Street” mean?
23. Why doesn’t Paul commit suicide with the revolver? Where does the revolver
come from?
24. Why does Paul go away from New York to commit suicide?
25. How have the flowers under glass become a metaphor for Paul?
26. Interpret the last sentence as an explanation of Paul’s dilemma.
27. List some possible themes: