In a society that continues to create and impose strict standards for people to conform to, there is little to no wiggle room to pursue a personal desire that is out of the norm. Willa Cather displays the drastic and life-changing decision between conformity and pursuit of personal desire, through the arrogant, high school character of Paul in the short story “Paul’s Case”, and the juxtaposition between the way he is living and the way he wants to live. In the beginning of the short story, Paul feels imprisoned in Cordelia Street and its uniformity; however, when he is further controlled and cut off from his means of escape, his hunger for the arts and personal desire to be a part of it becomes unbearable.
Initially, Paul is shown as a pompous student, with old and overgrown clothes. He is supposedly asking for forgiveness for his “various misdemeanors”, but his attitude and outfit, suggests otherwise. The red carnation is seen as flippant and his smile, devilish. These are adornments that…show more content… He smiles throughout the whole inquisition, even bowing as he leaves; however, he looks around just to see if anyone is “watching him and trying to detect something”, afraid that he let a part of his true nature slip--something his teachers are not worthy of seeing. After Paul leaves, the drawing master mentions a time that Paul fell asleep in class--unguarded--when he is like “an old man’s about the eyes, and his lips twitching even in his sleep”, which is distinctive to his contrived mannequin model look of “white teeth and the forced animation of his eyes”. This demonstrates the lack of understanding they have of Paul, which Paul perpetuates through his own web of lies as a control of how he is perceived. Originally, the narration is in the limited omniscient view of the teachers,
