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Book #11 of 2023 reading challenge

Reading prompt : A classic ahead of its time in exploring a subject - homosexuality

“It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.��

These lines that caught my attention and piqued my interest in the story which I found quite dull till I reached there. Paul's case starts with him being called in the principal's office where every teacher of his is making a case against him and he is rather defiant and detached.

Slowly we are revealed how Paul does not like his life and craves an altogether different one. His house, his community, he finds mundanely dull and he thinks he is superior to everyone around him. His father compares him to a clerk living in his community, wants Paul to become like him which isn't exactly any achievement according to Paul. This frustration, mixed with a desire for a luxurious lifestyle, causes him to purposely separate himself from everyone else, leading to feelings of isolation.

Paul's annoyance and hatred towards his life is obvious in every line and every act he does. His indignation and indifference to his circumstances oozes throughout the book.
“Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.��


As we further go into the story it is evident that
Paul is obsessed with money, and his belief that money will solve all his problems leads to unrelenting disappointment in his life. For him, theatre and music are the drugs. Paul uses art to escape his own consciousness, his mundane life.
This instant and shallow gratification is emphasized more when we are told that he didn't read novels which are also a form of the art but needs a proper dedication and concentration, so it doesn't attract his attention.


As written in the victorian era, discussing sex was inappropriate, so literature from the period could not use sexually explicit language or ideas; if it did, it would risk not being well-received, or even published so In my personal opinion, Cather is not sexually explicit; she imbues the story with innuendo that signals, perhaps unmistakably, a homosexual identity of the narrator.

His escape to new York can be considered as his escape from stigma around homosexuality. Everything builds up one on the other and leads to the catastrophe and his final escape from his reality which becomes too much to deal with for him.

Paul is rather unlikable and petty. He has achieved nothing of his own in his life, he hasn't even tried to do something good, forget about the great and his judgement of others feels laughable and condemnable both at the same time but I felt sad and sorry for the poor soul.

You can read the story here :