Pauls’s Case is the story of a young man who struggles with his identity. Paul feels that he knows where he belongs, but his family and teachers refuse to support his choices. In the middle of Paul’s Case, there is a switch in narration. At this point, the reader can associate with Paul and his problems. Paul struggles with both internal and external conflicts, causing him to be quite a puzzling character. From tha perspective of his family and teachers, Paul seems abnormal. From his perspective, however, he seems misunderstood.
In the beginning of the story, Paul seems to be a typical teenage boy: in trouble for causing problems in the classroom. As the story progresses, the reader can infer that Paul is rather withdrawn. He would rather live in his fantasy world than face reality. Paul dreaded returning home after the Carnegie Hall performances. He loathed his “ugly sleeping chamber with the yellow walls,” but most of all, he feared his father. This is the first sign that he has a troubled homelife. Next, the reader learns that Paul has no mother, and that his father holds a neighbor boy up to Paul as “a model” . The lack of affection that Paul received at home caused him to look elsewhere for the attention that he craved.
The theater and Carnegie Hall was where Paul “really lived”. To him, the rest of his life was but “a sleep and a forgetting”. The moment Paul stepped into either one of those places, he felt he was in his element. He “breathed like a prisoner set free”. Paul’s life was so monotonous and dull in comparison to his theater life, which he felt was his “secret temple”. This alone provides insight into his character. He truly believed that he belonged to the arts. This makes Paul’s case so sad because no one believed in him. This is what caused him to flee to New York to be in a place where he would be accepted for his true selt.
Paul’s train trip is where the change in narration occurs. Prior to this point, the author used an omniscient point of view. From this point on, the reader reads from Paul’s point of view. The change in narration helps the reader understand Paul’s perspective. He is not, as it seemed in the beginning, an abnormal person.
Hester vs. the Community in The Scarlet Letter
Hester vs. the Community in The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter seems to be created around Hawthorne’s obsession with the forbidding quality of the scarlet “A”, the symbol from which the novel takes its title. Rrom the rose-bush which Hawthorne selects a flower from as an offering to the reader(1) to the “elfish” child Pearl, every aspect of the story is drenched in this letter’s scarlet hue. Perhaps this repetition reflects Hawthorne’s own repressed desires, as some critics suggest(2). However, what seems more compelling is the function which the symbol serves for Hester Prynne and the community which has condemned her. For Hester the symbol is clearly a literary one; she fashions the scarlet “A” to fulfill the function of telling, in one solid image, her story of sorrow and strength. For the Puritan community the symbol does not lead to truth, but rather conceals it. They place their fears and darkest imaginings into this brand. Hawthorne’s possible artistic obsession brings to life a tortured woman, and the torment of the society that inflicts her punishment.
Freudian symbolism must be differentiated from literary symbolism in order to form a deeper understanding of the symbolic scarlet “A” conceived as a punishment by a Puritan society’s desire to uphold its truths, but brought into physical existence by Hester Prynne’s “fancy.”(3) Daniel Weiss embarks on the enterprise of solidifying this distinction in the first chapter of his book titled The Critic Agonistes: Psychology, Myth, and the Art of Fiction.(4). Weiss suggests that “the literary symbol is a concrete and untranslatable presentation of an idea, or an experience that cannot find its way into consciousness except throu…
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…Art of Fiction. Ed. Stephen Arkin and Eric Solomon. Seattle: U of Washington P. (1985): 21.
11. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter: Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York, New York: Bedford Books of St. Martins P., (1991): 74.
12. Weiss, Daniel. “The Critic Agonistes”. The Critic Agonistes: Psychology, Myth, and the Art of Fiction. Ed. Stephen Arkin and Eric Solomon. Seattle: U of Washington P. (1985): 21.
13. Brodhead, Richard H. “New and Old Tales: The Scarlet Letter.” Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P., (1973): 44.
14. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter: Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York, New York: Bedford Books of St. Martins P., (1991): 58.
15. ibid. 57.
16. ibid. 112.
17. ibid. 75.
18. ibid. 75.
19. ibid. 161.
20. ibid. 154.
21. ibid. 200.
22. ibid. 201.
23. ibid. 134.