In Dorothy Lessing's, "To Room Nineteen" and in Willa Cather's, "Paul's
Case" the protagonists, Susan Rawlings and Paul, respectively live two
livesâ€"the physical self and the "other" self. The latter is what governs
their every day motivationsâ€"their raison d'etres. It takes over their
entire being. And when they discover that this life is not something they
can call their very own or when there is danger of this life being
infiltrated, they see no reason to let the physical self survive. In each
tale, Paul and Susan commit suicide. And, it is in dying that the physical
or worldly self and the other self truly meet, albeit tragically.
Paul and Susan's lives are similar in that they are completely
disassociated from the real and the substantive. And they revel in life
built on imagination. They find succor and protection there. Their
revelries are also with the knowledge that they do not have to share this
unique existence with even those close to them. Then, there are contrasts.
Paul and Susan come into these dissociated existences through different
paths. Cather does not explain why Paul is the way he is. We just know
that this is how he lives. Paul has constructed for himself a fantasy land
where everything revolves around him. Even when his teachers belittle and
berate him for his callousness at school, his face is alive in a perpetual
grin and dancing eyes. It is as if he were a hero in an epic where his
heroism came from this suffering. He enjoys this center of attention.
When he lies and cajoles his way into the theater, the reader initially
believes that he is desperate to be an actor. But Cather immediately
dispels the reader's notion by informing that he wants to be nothing of the
sort. Paul imagines that he is in love with a ...