In Willa Cather’s story Paul’s Case, Paul’s father does not understand him, and the faculty members are resentful of Paul’s cocky attitude. He has a red carnation in his buttonhole and his tie is adorned by an opal stick pin. Such adornments and his constant smiling they consider not fitting for a student under suspension for a variety of misdemeanors. Paul knows little about music or art and has no desire to be a musician or an actor. He just wants to associate himself with things and people finer than school teachers and the denizens of Cordelier Street. The Schenley Hotel, which housed all the illuminati of Carnegie Hall, was a place he had often hung about, longing to enter and leave schoolmasters and dull care behind him forever.
In Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, Antonia is a respectful and lovely girl adored by most neighbors. She is her father’s sweet heart and the mother’s best help at home and on the field. Antonia is an immigrant from another country and was brought to Nebraska by the family in the hope of getting a better future for his elder brother, Ambrosch. She worked hard and learned English very fast as compared to the rest of the family. When Jim Burden thought she is powerless because she is a girl, she did not give in to him. She held fast to her womanhood and dominated him throughout their entire stay on the farm and in the city.
Antonia and Paul have some similarities and differences in life but each of them approaches their situation differently. They both wished to have a better life for themselves and escape the poverty into which they were born. Paul, a sensitive high school student, felt very frustrated with his home life and his family’s expectations that he would grow up to work in a factory or the steel mills as his father and most of his neighbors did. He was not close to anyone in his family and had no neighborhood or school friends. Instead, he spent his evenings ushering at the symphony hall or backstage at a local theater. Paul dreamed of living the life of the performers he saw. He was without discipline and without direction. He lacked creativity and responsibility in whatever he does. He had problems at school and was surly when called before a school committee. Eventually he was pulled out of school and sent to work by his father. This did not make him happy at all and the beginning of his downfall in life.
Antonia on the hand is very focused in life; she helped washed dishes and feed the family by helping the mother in the kitchen. She did not have the opportunity to go to school as early as Paul did but she never resented from helping the family because she lacked opportunities other kids have at her age. Antonia is very faithful and always sticks to the truth. Paul on the hand is a good liar and a thief; he devised a scheme to steal money from his employer and then ran away to New York City where he stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, living for a few days the life of his dreams. Unfortunately for Paul, they catch on him after eight days, and his father sets out to retrieve him. When Paul learns of this, he takes a cab out into the countryside and wanders, eventually collapsing exhausted. When he wakes, he hears a train. Being above a place where the rails cut through a hill, he decides to end his life. At the last moment however, he feels the full force of his empty life, and an awful regret. When he realized that he would have to return home and accept his punishment he killed himself. Paul longed to live a happy life but ended up foolishly killing himself.
Antonia on the other hand, pursued her dreams carefully. She worked on the farm and later went into the city to work for Mrs. Harling. She is very hard working. Even when her brother hired her out to work for people to feed the rest of the family without buying her clothes, she kept on working without deserting the family. She never ran away like Paul did when the father asked him to work. In the city, she had the opportunity to enjoy one of the moments she had been longing, to dance her shoes off. Even thought she faced criticism from her household about dancing, she respectfully told them this is one of the things she wanted to do in life and nothing was going to stop her from doing it. She also came under the pressure of Lena Lingard, the pretty and beautiful girl who Jim seems to like in addition to Antonia but Antonia was very careful and dealt with life in the best way possible. She did not take fight or gone astray during her life in the city. She got what she wanted, to get married, have children, a nice kitchen and farm with garden and animals in the country side. Her dreams came true and she never regrets any of it.
The settings for Paul’s case and My Antonia also matter in how the characters behave. My Antonia revolved around the country side in Nebraska. Antonia lived among animals of various forms and was surrounded by few great or luxury things in her neighborhood. She barely ate any good meal while on the field. They relied on sorghum molasses they brought from their home country for almost three days before Jim Burden’s family came to their aid. Even with the situation they were in, the shimerada’s do not seem to be so much shook by life as other people would have been. They waited upon the mercy of the lord and hope to survive in their new found land. Paul’s case however revolved about the city. A place where life is so sweet and luxurious but death is definitely imminent to those who fall victims of sin or misconduct. Paul thought that is his paradise and running to New York City will be the end to his suffering. But this is the very place he dug his own grave.
The symbols used in the two stories also give different understanding in the story. In Paul’s case, the train serves as the cutter of life, as can be compared to Wick Cutter in My Antonia, who made life hell for those who loaned money from him or Krajiek, the suspected killer of Mr. Shimerda. However in My Antonia, the train was the good transporter of Antonia to her dreams. She came from her country on the train and lived her dreamed life perfectly on the country-side of Nebraska, with babies and animals. Even when Jim Burden left for twenty years after intentionally proposing to her to be just anything from wife, mother or sister and never came back, she did not bother herself to death. She held fast to her faith and lived to marry her dream man, living Jim Burden with his worthy, unproductive, and unlovely woman in the city who doesn’t have the attraction in Antonia.
Willa Cather’s Paul’s case is more of a dream story. It lacks reality and sounds like a high school student’s dream that never happened in real life, while My Antonia is the true meaning to expectations most growing immigrants or people from very low standard families hold as they arrive in the United States, a county most people referred as the dream land, where they seek greener pastures or live life that they can never see in their home countries.
