Summary Of Paul's Case A Study In Temperament

Setting refers to the location of a story in terms of place, time, physical and social environment and functions to highlight the qualities of the protagonist. Willa Cather’s short story, “Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament,” takes place during the Winter of 1905 in both Pittsburg and New York City. The diverse settings of Pittsburg, New York City, Paul’s school, Carnegie Hall, Paul’s house on Cordelia Street and the Waldorf Hotel, greatly affect the behaviour of the main character, Paul. Paul, a suspended high school student in Pittsburgh, is frustrated with his middle-class life and the people around him not understanding his love of beautiful things. He moves through his world, never truly fitting in anywhere or ever feeling comfortable

Paul lies to the them and does not show remorse for his inappropriate behaviour at school because the school and authority are viewed as repulsive to him. This setting is developed to draw focus to the hostility that surrounds Paul. “His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack” (Cather 107) The teachers merciless attitude towards Paul contributes to his repulsion for school and authority. At school, Paul tells outrageous lies about his close friendships with the members of the

Therefore, weather plays an important role in revealing Paul. After one of the concerts at Carnegie Hall, he trails the star soprano to her hotel, the Schenley, and imagines vividly that he is following her inside the luxurious building. As if awaking from a dream, Paul realizes that he is actually standing in the cold, rainy street. Paul feels wet and cold and wonders if he’s “destined always to shiver in the black night outside,” banned from entering the hotel’s “exotic, tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and basking ease.” The rain causes Paul to feel helplessly shut out from the “fairy world” he seeks to enter. As well as the rain, at the end of the short story, Paul is found staring out the windows of his hotel room at the raging snowstorm outside. The snow changes from “whirling in curling eddies,” signifying Paul’s newfound freedom, to an ominous “raging storm” that makes the city “snow-bound” and lies “heavy on the roadways,” paralleling Paul’s inability to escape from his Cordelia Street Life. However, instead of staying inside, he flees to the countryside and exhausts himself to the point he needs to lie down in the snow to sleep. Teeth chattering from the cold and incapable of reconciling himself to the reality he abhors, Paul takes his fatal jump, seeing in his mind's eye fragments of a Mediterranean paradise, not snow. The