Paul's Case

What is different for Paul in New York City? Why do you think he likes it so much there?

"He felt now that his surroundings explained him. Nobody questioned the purple, he had only to wear it passively. He had only to glance down at his attire to reassure himself that here it would be impossible for anyone to humiliate him." This qoute explains Paul's attitude concerning his life in Pittsburgh on Cornelia street versus the extravagant one he has in New York. In the text Paul experiences "a mere release from the necessity of petty lying." Here he no longer has to back up his "boastful pretensions" of an imaginary, opulent life he has apart from the suburbs of his hometown. Paul is set free from the suffocating reality of his past and he even goes as far to doubt the existence of it at all: "Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged-looking businessmen got on the early car..."