FREE ESSAY ON LIFE'S TRADGEDIES

LIFE'S TRADGEDIES

Life's Tragedies
I had always believed that suicide was only in the movies. Two summers ago I realized
that it could happen in real life. I had a mutual friend his name was Rick. He was a
smart and good-looking boy who seemed to have it all. His parents were two of the nicest
people that I have ever met. They had a healthy marriage, good jobs, and a nice home.
They always provided Rick with anything he needed or wanted. Rick had a girlfriend named
Jamie and a lot of friends. He was also supposed to attend the University of Pittsburgh
in the fall of 1997. Something was obviously missing in his life because it ended
abruptly one night after a going away party for him. He went upstairs and took his best
friend with him and pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head before his friend could
figure out what was happening. He is a good example of a tragic life that was lost. In
the story Paul's Case, Willa Cather shows that Paul is destroyed by a conflict with a
hostile environment.
Everyone in his or her life encounters some type of conflict. Whether it is with a person
or a thing. Paul's first conflict is with his teachers. A good example is demonstrated in
the passage about his English teacher:
Once, when he had been making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his English
teacher had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started back
with a shudder and thrust his hands violently behind him (Willa Cather, "Paul's Case",
Story and Structure, Ed. L. Perrine, p. 155).
From this example it is evident that Paul is an independent individual and does not want
the help of his teachers. Another example came from the passage, which took place during
a meeting with his principal and his teachers:
His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and
his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English
teacher leading the pack ("Paul's Case", p. 155).
Among the problems between Paul and his teachers, Paul had conflict with his father too.
The best example is when Paul walks around his house:
Meanwhile, he was wet and cold. He went around to the back of the house and tried one of
the basement windows, found it open, and raised it cautiously, and scrambled down the
cellar wall to the floor... he was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try to sleep,
he sat looking distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have awakened his
father ("Paul's Case", p. 159).
It is obvious that Paul is terrified of his father and would do anything to steer away
from him. A second example is shown when Paul's father goes to Carnegie Hall:
The upshot of the matter was that the principal went to Paul's father, and Paul was taken
out of school and put to work. The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher
in his stead; the doorkeeper at the theater was warned not to admit him to the house: and
Charley Edwards remorsefully promised the boy's father not to see him again ("Paul's
Case", p. 162).
This was the climax of the story that caused Paul to be even more upset. Working at the
theater was what he enjoyed and his father took that away from him. This left him feeling
lonely and upset.
Among the problems with his father and his teachers Paul had conflict with his
environment too. An example is when Paul walks down Cordelia Street: 
The following Sunday was fine... On Seasonable Sunday afternoons the burghers of Cordelia
Street usually sat out in their front 'stoops', and talked to their neighbors on the next
stoop, or called to those across the street in neighborly fashion. The men sat placidly
on gay cushions placed upon the steps that led down to the sidewalk while the women, in
their Sunday 'waists', sat in rockers on the cramped porches, pretending to be greatly at
their ease ("Paul's Case", p. 158).
The second example is demonstrated in the passage where Paul approaches his house: 
The nearer he approached the house, the more absolutely unequal he felt to the sight of
it all: his ugly sleeping chamber; the old bathroom with the grimy zinc tub, the cracked
mirror, the dripping spigots ("Paul's Case", p. 158).
Unfortunately, Paul's interests were not the same as his fathers. He felt his teachers
were of no help and they did not challenge him, as he would have liked. His environment
did not live up to his standards either. He was interested in the theater and this
differed from the people who lived around him. Because of these circumstances he sold
himself short by taking his own life:
As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness
of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer that ever before,
the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian Sands ("Paul's Case", p. 169).
Paul is destroyed by a conflict with a hostile environment. Paul lost the struggle
against his own life's conflicts and ended in tragedy.