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The story of Pauls Case, by Willa Cather, is one of a boy who seldom felt that he belonged. He lived in a suburban home where everyone seemed the same and there was a feeling of despair. Paul, who was a young man, felt that his father, teachers and classmates misunderstood him and therefore were unworthy of his company. In the story there are many symbolic elements.
Flowers, for instance, symbolize Pauls personality and life. The parallel between the boy and the flowers is made by the author many times throughout the short story. In the beginning of the story Paul has a meeting with the teachers of his school because he was misbehaving. For the meeting Paul shows up wearing clothes [that] were a trifle outgrown... [with] a red carnation in his buttonhole. This shows his total disrespect for authority because he is there to be disciplined; the teachers thought this was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension. The flower he wore shows that he does not care about school or his teachers: his teachers felt that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower.
The principal also noted his conceit as he left the meeting and bowed which was described to be a repetition of the scandalous red carnation. It is almost as if the flower is his strength and reminds him of his need to be with a different class of people. Paul worked as an usher at Carnegie Hall. This was the only place where he really felt himself unfold. He became lost in the music, plays, and art. While Paul was at home, he would dream about the life he believed himself to be living as a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers.
To Paul, people who enjoyed having the presence of flowers seemed to be of a higher class above the rest. That is why he always wore a flower. He describes his neighbourhood, the people he despises to be, prosy men who never wore frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes. He would dream about, the flowers he sent, to members of the stock company who were his acquaintances. Paul wants to be as the flowers, living to all of their extent, saturating in the beauty of life. While Paul was in New York City one of the first things he did was [ring] for the bell boy [to send] him down flowers.
He was living out his dreams. He was pleased with his surroundings and his style of living during his days in New York and expressed his dearest pleasure [was]... his enjoyment of his flowers, and goes on to say that he couldnt remember a time of such bliss. He loved all forms of creative expression and was intrigued by whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow. The flowers induce a happiness in Paul at the time of his greatest revolution. During the last days of his stay in New York, Paul feels that his status is becoming dead and useless as his money runs out.
He begins to die inside as with his authority shown by the violets he wears in his buttonhole. Paul expresses the symbolism between his life and the flowers: The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed; all their red glory over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the snow windows that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass. It was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up.
Then he dozed a while, from his weak condition, seeming insensible to the cold. Even with his dying thoughts, Paul is concerned about the things he will never get to do because he will never be a part of a high class society. Paul regretted his own personal rebellion. Just as his beautiful, perfect flowers had shone with radiance and basked in their glory of being beautiful, so did Paul. Likewise, a flowers beauty does not last forever; Pauls upper class experience would also not last forever and his true happiness was limited to just a few days, just like his flower.
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Research essay sample on Red Carnation Paul Flowers
