Red Carnation In Paul's Case

In her short story “Paul’s Case,” Willa Cather’s use of red carnations serves as a symbol for her protagonist Paul’s own life. The carnations, alongside the significance of the color red, appear multiple times throughout the story. They exemplify the statement Cather makes about how people and objects who attempted to live a different kind of life in the early twentieth century were not rewarded. Cather cleverly takes advantage of her third person omniscient narration to provide the reader with different perspectives on the carnations and their color. Not only do the carnations depict Paul’s desperation to stand out from his peers and urge to escape his suffocating neighborhood for a more liberating life, they portray his delicate and sensitive nature, as well as foreshadow his short lifespan. The red carnations play a significant part in distinguishing Paul’s ‘case’ as one that is misunderstood and looked down upon from the very beginning. “He wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole” (1) to his trial at school - a tribute by Cather to the infamous green carnations sported by Oscar Wilde, a man who was also on trial, and went to jail for sodomy. Cather’s brilliant use of focalization
The reason he is so captivated by his job as an usher and the New York Hotel is because he longs for a different life from the one where he lives in fear of his father, away from his “loathing” of Cordelia Street. “He is in the omnipotence of wealth.” (7) “He burnt on a faggot in a tempest” is not only notable because of the double meaning of the word ‘faggot,’ (a word which became coined as a slur towards gay men in 1914) but because he wants to be freely able to express himself, to break beyond the shackles of society and stand out amidst the regular - just like his