Paul's Case: Character Analysis

• Paul is summoned before the Pittsburg High School faculty for his misdeeds.
• He was suspended a week prior; his father expressed his bewilderment.
• Paul entered the faculty room appearing composed and smiling.
• Paul's attire suggested a dandy persona with an opal pin, black four-in-hand tie, and a red carnation.
• The faculty questions the carnation's sincerity as a sign of contrition.
• Paul is tall and thin and has high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest.
• His eyes have a remarkable, theatrical brilliance.
• The pupils of his eyes are abnormally large, possibly from belladonna, but without its usual effect.
• Asked about his presence, Paul claims he wishes to return to school.
• He is accustomed to lying as a means of avoiding conflict.
• Teachers describe his offenses with unusual rancor, citing disorder and impertinence.
• The real issue lies in his defiant and contemptuous attitude.
• Paul recoiled physically when his English teacher attempted to guide his hand.
• Teachers are offended by Paul's shrug and carnation, and criticize him harshly, which he endures with a smile.
• His lips twitch, and he raises his eyebrows contemptuously.
• Paul is always smiling and looking around him, and seems to think people are watching.
• His conscious expression is not child-like, but may be insolent.
• One instructor recalls an impertinent remark Paul made, which is met with Paul shrugging.
• Paul says he doesn't know if he meant to be polite or impolite and that it is just how he talks.
• The sympathetic principal suggests dropping the mannerism, which Paul agrees to.
• Paul bows gracefully upon dismissal, repeating the "scandalous red carnation."
• The drawing-master notes something haunting about him, adding Paul was born in Colorado shortly before his mother died, and is not strong.
• The drawing-master recognizes that only Paul's white teeth and eyes' forced animation are visible.
• The master notes a veined face, drawn and wrinkled around the eyes, twitching lips, and his nervous tension.
• Paul whistles the soldiers' chorus from "Faust," looking back to see if teachers are bothered.
• As an usher at Carnegie Hall, he chooses not to go home, instead waiting at a tobacconist until it is concert time.
• Paul dresses excitedly in the ushers' room.
• Paul is sensitive about his narrow chest when wearing the uniform.
• He teases the other ushers until they pin him down on the floor.
• He is a model usher, gracious and attentive, making people feel admired.
• As the house fills, it becomes like a great reception, and Paul is the host.
• Sinking into a rear seat as the symphony begins, he feels a connection to the music.
• The music frees something within him, causing the lights to dance.
• When the soprano soloist comes on, Paul closes his eyes, stimulated by her presence and seeing her as royalty.
• After concert Paul is irritable and restless.
• He feels he cannot abandon the exhilaration of being alive.
• Paul slips out to the side door to see the soprano's carriage.
• The Schenley Hotel is lit like a Christmas tree.
• Paul watches people enter, wanting to abandon his schoolmasters and dull care.
• He wonders if the singer's "auf wiedersehen" to the conductor means she was a past sweetheart.
• Paul follows her to the hotel entrance and imagines going inside to an exotic, tropical atmosphere.
• He contemplates fine dining and green bottles in ice buckets.
• A gust of wind reminds Paul he is outside in the slush, with wet boots and coat.
• He sees the fairy world of Christmas as tangible, but stands guard outside the doors, destined to shiver in the night.
• Paul walks to the car tracks.
• He thinks of explanations that do not satisfy, his upstairs room and yellow wallpaper, the creaking bureau and pictures of Washington and Calvin.
• His home is next to the house of the Cumberland minister.
• Paul approaches his home "with the nerveless sense of defeat."
• Turning onto Cordelia Street, he feels like the waters close over his head.
• He experiences physical depression after living outside of the norm.
• Paul feels there is loathing of respectable beds and common food and there is a shrinking from the colorless mass of existence in his home.
• Paul is repulsed by his ugly room, cold bathroom, cracked mirror, dripping spigots, and father at the top of the stairs.
• Knowing it is later than usual, Paul avoids his father by entering through a basement window.
• He spends the night with the sound of rats.
• Paul realizes he is clear-headed when his senses are deadened.
• He supposes extreme senarios with his father, like being shot as a burglar or the regret of shooting him.
• On Sunday, Paul is compelled to attend church and Sabbath school, as usual and the burghers of Cordelia Street sit out on their front stoops, talking to neighbors.
• Paul sits on the steps and stares into the street while his sisters talk to the minister's daughters.
• The girls made lemonade and put it in a clear red pitcher, which the neighbors jokingly suspect of being alcoholic.
• Paul's father sits with the young man that Paul is expected to pattern.
• The young married man is twenty-six to Paul's seventeen.
• The young man claims that he went wild a bit when he was younger, but at 21 he married the first women who would have him on the magnate's advice.
• The chief that he works for is in the Mediterranean, but is still running the business from there.
• Paul's father says the company will put in an electric railway plant at Cairo.
• Paul snaps his teeth, but is interested in the palaces the iron kings live in.
• Paul fantasizes about high play at Monte Carlo and does not wish to live a cash-boy life.
• Paul's requests nervously to go to George's for geometry help and then for car fare.
• The latter Paul has to repeat, given his father's aversion to giving money.
• Paul scrubs the dish-water from his fingers with the soap he hates and puts on violet water from his drawer .
• Paul shakes off the lethargy of the two days as he boards a car outside of Cordelia Street.
• The leading juvenile of the stock company is an acquaintance of Paul's, who drops in on Sundays.
• Paul had spent every moment loitering about Charley Edwards's dressing-room.
• Paul has found a place with Edwards, who cannot afford a dresser and also recognizes something of vocation of life.
• The theatre and Carnegie Hall are where Paul lives.
• Paul feels like he can do or say splendidly, but sees the possibility of poetic things.
• Stupid and ugly things slide from him.
• Paul's theatrical life offers an unnatural beauty.
• Sabbath-school picnics and wholesome advice make Paul feel like his life is alluring, and the actors are attractive, and is moved by under the lime-light.
• For Paul, the stage entrance is the portal of romance.
• The company doesn't understand, least of all Charley Edwards.
• Those fabulously rich Jews who had subterranean halls there; with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps, and richly appareled women, live here.
• Enamored by figures and grimy toil, Paul had his secret temple and his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore.
• Several teachers thought Paul's imagination was perverted via fiction.
• Paul does not read much.
• The books at home are not such as would tempt or corrupt.
• Music gives him what he is looking for: the spark and master of his imagination.
• Paul does not what to be an actor.
• He wants to be in the atmosphere and float off.
• Paul finds the school room repulsive.
• He sees autographs of all the stock company and claims he knows them very well.
• When the stories lose effect, Paul wants to travel to other places.
• Paul will slip back as his sister is ill and the trip is deferred to spring.
• Paul let instructors knows he has no time for theorems as he is helping the people at stock company.
• The principal went to Paul's father and he gets taken out of school and put to work.
• The manager tells the hall to get another usher, and Edwards promises not to see him agin.
• Stock company finds it funny that they stirred his inventions and his fervor.
• The group agrees that Paul's case is a bad case.
• The east-bound train plowing through a January snow-storm.
• Newark is a mile out.
• Paul starts up from the seat and peers out.
• The drifts are already deep in fields and along fences and there are long dried weeds.
• Paul has sleeping problems so he feels grimy and does not want to dress in his new attire.
• When woken he glances and clutches quickly at his breast pocket.
• In the Jersey City station, Paul eats breakfast then asks for a cab.
• Consults a cabman to go to a furnishing and men store for the day.
• The frock-coat and dress-clothes he had bundled into the cab with his linen.
• Paul drives Tiffany's and his silver does not need to me marked.
• Paul goes along Broadway an packs the purchases into traveling bags.
• To Washington he is a little after one o'clock when he goes up to the Waldorf.
• He says his parents are abroad.
• Not once, but a hundred times is the entry into the hotel planned and there are description about New York hotels.
• Everything in his sitting room on the eighth floor is as it should be, but a boy gets sent for his flowers.
• Nervously the linen gets put away in a bath.
• He emerges in his silk under wear and tassels.
• So snowy out, so he puts the violets and jonquils on the taboret over his Roman blanket.
• The theate and concert shut him out, then everything was virtually determined.
• He was always tormented by fear, especially as the lies closed about him.
• A shadowed corner from which something seemed always to be watching him.
• Paul sulking until sent with Carson's deposits as usual- instructed leave book balanced.
• Has nerves permission return the office.
• The book bank-book will be returned before Monday or Tuesday, and father weeks away.
• He had not known a moment's hesitation.
• Paul steers through treacherous waters.
• Each time there is not awakening on this stairway.
• Falls asleep.
• Three in the morning, half the precious days gone.
• Everything quite perfect.
• A carriage Fifth Avenue.
• Street made colored by woolen mufflers. flower-gardens under gas.
• Each story lit Atlantidc wind.
• A black stream of carriages poured.
• Afirmation on opulence.
• The plots texts were with the boy.
• Orchestra greeted at dinner, but lights perfume overwhelming.
• There was comfort as the boy said it was his own people.
• Each room champered after with magic.
• Paul sat at able next a window.
• He doubted past and everything called Cordelia Street.
• Not abashed at all.
• No misgivings with what he wore.
• Hard to leave great sitting to go bedtime.
• Timidity not wash.
• Sunday snow bound day.
• Freshman had brought the night.
• They elevator made them cool.
• Ice water and dizzy papers.
• Hotel suspcision.
• Dignity under the spoils.
• The wizard wine and goodness.
• Winter evening he enjoyed to fullest.
• Petty lying and being noticed.
• Dress this part .
• Each act was good.
• Paul's afir expoilted sensational local to New York.
• Denny returned the father prosecution.
• Bring the boy home.
• To dress now and sink in chair.
• To bad jail and forever close.
• Yelloe meeting.
• Orchestra suddenly stopped.
• Wink face.
• Leasons the dass corridor.
• He now dinner room, measure rembemrance.
• Glare and power potency.
• The doubtful existence of recklessly drunk.
• Not amongst the purple had still on.
• Himself was in his own spot.
• Over and over, everything was a price.
• Now out bound was too wise.
• Over and over.
• Pailful aching everything the parched parched.
• Water the story washing over the father.
• He told the tale of his weight.
• A way to snap everything from dressing table.
• Metallic dislike to efforts.
• Then cord street did know.
• Now saw the best over an revolver.
• CAb newak to ferry railwaýs.
• Drivers womad that all.
• His mind could cope every image.
• Had better mouth was hillisde.
• Flowers carntion cold gloru over
• It s only splidnded outside that
• Wom world the cover snow.
• He starts afraid resolution
• Too the approaching.
• Smiile whatched.
• As did the jump what had ungone.
• Clear what was that body mechanism flashe the designer

Explore Paul's character, internal conflicts, and alienation in 'Paul's Case' by Willa Cather. Analyze his perceptions, defiance, and the symbolism within the narrative. Understand Paul's struggle for identity and belonging.