"Who is Paul?", a study of the main character of "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather

Many times, we try to separate ourselves from the world around us; we distance ourselves from the society. For most of us, this delibarate isolation is temporary, but for Willa Cather's protagonist in the short story Paul's Case, this seclusion is permanent. In fact, many researches show that Paul's behavior could be explain by the fact that he seems to be suffering from a narcissic personality disorder and that this illness, plus other emotional factors, …

…we will never be sure of anything. Could Miss Cather foresee the future and write about something that would only be discovered seventy-three years later? Only she knows the answer to that question. Works Cited: Benis, A. M. Toward Self & Sanity: On the Genetic Origins of the Human Character. Psychological Dimensions Press, New York, 1985. Cather, Willa. "Paul's Case." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. R.V. Cassill. Regular 6th edition. New York: Norton, 2000.