Colorful

Although "Paul's Case" was quite a depressing story, it was multicolored, symbolizing Paul's emotional status and ambitions. When he appears at school to plead for his continuation in school, he wears a red carnation on his overcoat (Bohner and Grant 202). This, which the teachers have felt inappropriate and that Paul was mocking them, portrayed his ambition to get out of the middle-class life he's living in at that moment, to the bourgeoisie life he dreams of. It also signified his discontent in the middle-class life, and the power in which he keeps on trying to attain independence from the middle-class values. Red also comes up later in the story as the "red robe" he purchases after the escape from his home, and the "red velvet carpet laid from the door [of the hotel he's staying in] to the street," illustrating his belief that he had attained power to get out of the proletariat life (Bohner and Grant 210-11). When he thinks about his house, he thinks about the "horrible yellow wallpaper" of his room along with the other terrible things (Bohner and Grant 205). Yellow represents the ugliness and abhorrence of Paul's own life. Purple, especially represented by purple he was wearing, represents luxury and prosperity-the bourgeoisie life Paul wanted to belong in (Bohner and Grant 212). The color blue is mentioned excessively when he is in the art gallery: "Raffelli's gay studies of Paris streets and an airy blue Venetian scene" would be one example (Bohner and Grant 204). Blue symbolizes Paul's dream, or his dream world, far from his reality. He experiences such grand feeling when he looks at the art works in the beginning of this short story. When Paul realizes that his dream he had thought had come true was only temporary, the color black facades him:

"The memory of successive summers on the front stoop fell upon him like a weight of black water. He had not a hundred dollars left; and he knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all the loathed and all he wanted" (Bohner and Grant 213).

The color black proposes darkness, loneliness, how the fear comes back to Paul to haunt him. It also hints the upcoming death, which he carries out after seeing his red flower dying in the winter's coldness, in an unstable environment, realizing the briefness of his unstable "flourishing" moment. Although astonishingly colorful, the most of the colors in this story signifies quite repugnant concepts, indicating that being colorful does not necessarily mean happiness, although it does certainly mean a sign of life of enthusiasm, unlike one of boredom and passiveness. If Paul's color was supported by his community and helped him do something that could advance him in the society he wants to be in, he would not have run away from his own life would have made a huge difference in his life.