Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case"

429 Words2 Pages
By reading the end of Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament”, readers predict that Paul commits suicide by throwing himself before a train. But Michael Salda does not believe that. The author starts the passage by creating a question in our mind if Paul is truly dead or not. In the passage, Salda questions many times if we should call this a suicide just on the basis of the textual evidence. Salda found something strange that most readers are not shocked by the ending and would find the reason to understand the fact that Paul has committed suicide. Throughout the story, Salda makes his mission to determine whether Paul truly did commit suicide at the end of the story or not. Salda predicts most of the story takes place in Paul’s imagination. He says that Paul has wrapped himself in an imagine reality that is preferable only to him. He calls it a “daydream” or some sort of imagined scenario within Paul’s mind. Salda argues when Paul is hiding in his cellar is not reality. He suggests that Paul has created other realms because he cannot deal with real world. According to Salda, Paul starts to fall back into reality when he “drops back into the immense design of things”. Paul believes something to the effect of, “this time there would be no awakening,” once he arrives in New York. He believes this because his dream state has become his reality, and he feels he will be able to escape reality. Salda also points out that we see Paul with the gun in New York, which is only possible to him in his dream state. Salda used a metaphor of Paul being smacked back into the reality after being hit head-on by the train. He explains why Willa Cather decided to use “case” because it presents a “case” of Paul’s daydream. Salda differs from the reader because instead of the meaning behind using “case” for the suicide, he uses it to explain Paul’s case of his visions.

More about Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case"

Open Document