Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case"
"Paul's Case":
"Paul's Case" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in McClure's Magazine in 1905.
Paul, a suspended high school student in Pittsburgh, is frustrated with his middle-class life and the people around him not understanding his love of beautiful things, and he runs away to New York City.
The term "Paul's case" is the way teachers and his father refer to Paul concerning his lack of interest in school. It has been suggested that it enables Cather to "[impersonate] the voice of medical authority."
Willa Cather:
Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.
Willa Cather
The Red Carnations in Willa Cather's Paul's Case:
The red carnations Paul often wears in his buttonhole represent Paul himself. At the beginning of the story, when Paul wears a red carnation to meet his teachers and principal, the adults correctly interpret its presence as evidence of Paul’s continued defiance. They want him to show remorse, but the jaunty flower proves that he feels none. At the end of the story, Paul buys red carnations. As he walks to the train tracks, he notices that they have wilted in the cold. He buries one of the flowers in the snow before leaping in front of a train. The carnation’s burial is a symbolic prelude to Paul’s actual suicide.
social novel:
The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". More specific examples of social problems that are addressed in such works, include poverty, conditions in factories and mines, the plight of child labor, violence against women, rising criminality, and epidemics because of over-crowding, and poor sanitation in cities.
Charles Dickens:
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist:
Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by Charles Dickens, and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin.
Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.
A Christmas Carol 小氣財神
A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall on 19 December 1843. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
Marley's Ghost visit Scrooge
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from a famous religious family and is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). It depicts the harsh life for African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and Great Britain. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin:
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned "mammy"; the "pickaninny" stereotype of black children; and the "Uncle Tom", or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."
Bildungsroman 教育小說
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman, novel of formation, novel of education, or coming of age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is extremely important. For example: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship:
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1795–96.
prairie 大草原
Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type.
prairie
savannah 熱帶的稀樹大草原
A savanna or savannah is a grassland ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses.
savannah
McClure's:
McClure's or McClure's Magazine (1893–1929) was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism (investigative, watchdog or reform journalism), and helped shape the moral compass of the day.
Investigative journalism 調查報導
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism is a primary source of information. Most investigative journalism is conducted by newspapers, wire services, and freelance journalists.
Muckraker 扒糞記者
The term muckraker was used in the Progressive Era to characterize reform-minded American journalists who wrote largely for all popular magazines. The modern term is investigative journalism, and investigative journalists today are often informally called "muckrakers." They relied on their own reporting and often worked to expose social ills and corporate and political corruption. Muckraking magazines—notably McClure's of publisher S. S. McClure—took on corporate monopolies and crooked political machines while raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and social issues like child labor.
The term is a reference to a character in John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, "the Man with the Muck-rake" that rejected salvation to focus on filth. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech; Roosevelt acknowledged that "the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck..."
Watergate scandal 水門案
Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.
Watergate office complex
paparazzi 狗仔隊
Paparazzi are independent photographers who take pictures of athletes, entertainers, politicians, and other celebrities, typically while going about their usual life routines.
A news photographer named Paparazzo (played by Walter Santesso in the 1960 film La Dolce Vita directed by Federico Fellini) is the eponym of the word "paparazzi". In his book Word and Phrase, Robert Hendrickson writes that Fellini took the name from an Italian dialect word that describes a particularly annoying noise, that of a buzzing mosquito.
scoop 獨家新聞
Pittsburgh:
Pittsburgh is the second largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the county seat of Allegheny County. The Combined Statistical Area (CSA) population of 2,659,937 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and the 20th-largest in the U.S. Located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River, Pittsburgh is known as both "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses, and as "the City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges.
commencement 畢業典禮
hooding ceremony:
A Hooding Ceremony is a special recognition ceremony for doctoral degree candidates during which a faculty advisor and the Dean of Graduate Academics place the doctoral hood, signifying his or her success in completing the graduate program. The ceremony is similar to a graduation in that the faculty and students are dressed in academic attire.
Warren Buffett:
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the most successful investor in the world. Buffett is the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, and is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and as the third wealthiest in 2015. In 2012 Time named Buffett one of the world's most influential people.
Warren Buffett
locomotive 火車頭；機車
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