The way you view your experience can determine if the glass is half full, or half empty. This process the can determine your outlook and create a positive occasion or a negative scene, depending on your evaluation. This was the main problem in the story; Paul is a very confused child and, in the rhetoric of the story, it is apparent in the form of vague explanations. When he describes the school life and/or his neighborhood, it is apparent that he does not enjoy any aspect of them, but is not at all specific about why. It is Willa Cather whom finally reveals the details that are so troubling and explains what he is so bothered by. The yellow wallpaper he hates, or the work ethic and class of the neighbors, the comparison and hope that Paul will grow up like the young clerk that Paul’s father emulates and hopes he will follow. The negativity and confused outlook at his situation adds into the worry that suicide is eminent in this story.
Paul’s case is an egocentric view into the life of a boy struggling with his identity. He has a hard time finding himself and accepting where his life is, and where it is going. He lives with his father in Pittsburgh, and his two sisters, whom are rarely spoken of. In the opening of the story, he is being kicked out of school and could care less. He works as an usher at Carnegie Hall and that was where Paul felt most at ease as stated here; “It was at the theater that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul’s fairytale and it had for him, all the allurement of a secret love” (Cather 273). He loses himself in the music, and we get the first clue that he has identity confusion. He does not like where his father lives, nor the bedroom he is given. He feels as if the class he has been born into is not for him and that he is destined for bigger and better things. Paul ends up getting banned from the school, Carnegie Hall, and the local theater he frequented by his father for what has happened at school. Paul then goes on a journey to New York and goes on a spending spree. Later learning that his spree was funded by a job he had gotten in which he was to take the nightly deposit and put it in the bank, Paul did not do that. After learning that his father had paid for his wrong-doings and was headed to New York to find him, he jumps in front of an oncoming train, feeling that there was just no way for him to go on, no avenues to venture down.
Throughout the story the tone seems to be sympathetic to Paul and his negativity. There is a taste that is left, that makes you feel as if Paul has no way out or that he will resolve his issues. However, when the story gets to the descriptions of the neighborhood, Paul stops with his descriptions and Cather points out what he fails to, insinuating that he is overreacting to situations that are not that bad. The story allows the mind to wonder what the deep down conflict of this boy really is and if it will ever be resolved. The question about Paul being homosexual occurs at the end of every paragraph. Cather elaborates, “Until now he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading something even when he was a little boy it was always there- behind him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place into which he dared not look but from which something seemed always to be watching him- and Paul had not done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew” (p. 276). The dark side of Paul was the confusion about his sexuality and not being able to expose it to his peers and family, created such a negative outlook on everything for himself.
It is apparent to me that I see the glass as half full and always acknowledge that there is always another way to look at things. Throughout my life I have always had the shorter end of the stick and had to make the best of it. Through this process, I learned to make a half empty glass look, and feel, half full. It is not about what you have or do not have; it is how you feel about your experience and where you place the emphasis. If the outlook becomes negative, so does your experience. When I read about Paul, I answer his questions out loud and exclaim that he is seeing things the wrong way and he goes about his description completely negatively. This is because of who I am, or perhaps that I do not understand big-city life, but regardless it is how life it seen through his eyes and not mine.
Paul being clinically depressed plays a vital role in his personal analysis. He brings his attitude to school and disregards the instructors; he takes it into the neighborhood and criticizes what he does not have, if he were just out and proud the cloud of bad outlook would dissipate. He never speaks of his family or talks about the loss of his mother early on, which should be a support system for him, but he has closeted his entire family. The true facts are that his father truly supports and loves Paul, he did not even look at the fact that his father was on his way to New York to help him out, instead he saw that his father was on his way and was hunting him down. It is his depression of how he feels inside that set the tone of confusion is his day to day interactions and actions.
The deeper and deeper the reader gets into the story the action of suicide becomes more and more imminent. By the time Paul hits the front of the train, the reader has a basket of reason for him to do so, and it is shown that there is no other way out. He had lost his mother at an early age, he is pushed away by his environment, he longs to be upper-class and not lower class where his father is, he is struggling with his sexuality, his hunger for money that he does not have, and his love for theater. Throughout the story it is apparent that the list of reasoning is being formulated to validate a suicide, when there never is validation, there is always a different avenue to go down. But this was his avenue he saw fit and chose, with a confused mind or not, it is what he chose.
Paul did not think he had a choice, his life was one disappointment after another and it did not make him happy. He saw his everyday life as not what he wanted and could not see a ladder out. He had dreams and hopes to get out and achieve what he wanted, but life was too much for him. Much of his view on the situation could have been changed drastically. He had such a negative look upon every view he had, who could live like that? If he would have tried to see the positive in his life, he would not have had to look that far. He had a family that did care for him, he lived in a house where the feng shui was not up to his standards, but he had a roof over his head and a warm meal. All Paul needed was someone to change his operation of thought and see things for things for what they were worth. The abundance of reasoning behind his choice was created throughout the story in an attempt to validate his suicide, but my bias towards there always being another way would not allow me to accept that.
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