Hehehe Essay, Research Paper

home where everyone seemed the same and there was a feeling of despair.

Paul, who

was a young man, felt that his father, teachers and classmates misunderstood

him and

therefore were unworthy of his company. In the story there are many symbolic

elements. Flowers, for instance, symbolize Paul’s personality and life. The

parallel

between the boy and the flowers is made by the author many times throughout

the

short story.

In the beginning of the story Paul has a meeting with the teachers of his school

because he was misbehaving. For the meeting Paul shows up wearing “clothes

[that]

were a trifle outgrown . . . [with] a red carnation in his buttonhole” (49). This

shows his

total disrespect for authority because he is going to get disciplined; and the

teachers

thought this “was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy

under the

ban of suspension” (49).” The flower he wore shows that he does not care

about

school or his teachers: his teachers felt “that his whole attitude was symbolized

by his

shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower” (50). The principal also noted his

conceit

as he left the meeting and bowed which was described to be “a repetition of

the

scandalous red carnation” (51). It is almost as if the flower is his strength and

reminds

him of his need to be with a different class of people.

Paul worked as an usher at Carnegie Hall. This was the only place where he

really felt himself unfold. He became lost in the music, plays, and art. While

Paul was

at home, he would dream about the life he believed himself to be living as “a

morbid

desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers” (55). To Paul, people

who

enjoyed having the presence of flowers seemed to be of a higher class above

the rest.

That is why he always wore a flower. He describes his neighbourhood, the

people he

despises to be, “prosy men who never wore frock

coats, or violets in their buttonholes (pg. 60).” He would dream about, “the

flowers he

sent (pg. 60),” to members of the stock company who were his

“acquaintances.” Paul

wants to be as the flowers, living to all of their extent, saturating in the beauty

of life.

While Paul was in New York City one of the first things he did was “[ring] for

the

bell boy [to send] him down flowers” (62). He was living out his dreams. He

was

pleased with his surroundings and his style of living during his days in New

York and

expressed his “dearest pleasure [was] . . . his enjoyment of his flowers” (66),

and goes

on to say that he couldn’t remember a time of such bliss. He loved all forms of

creative

expression and was intrigued by, “whole flower gardens blooming behind

glass

windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses,

carnations,

lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they

blossomed thus

unnaturally in the snow.” (64) The flowers induce a happiness in Paul at the

time of

his greatest revolution.

During the last days of his stay in New York, Paul feels that his status is

becoming dead and useless as his money runs out. He begins to die inside as

with his

authority shown by the violets he wears in his buttonhole. Paul expresses the

symbolism between his life and the flowers:

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed;

all their red glory over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had

seen in the snow windows that first night must have gone the same

way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in

spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass. It was a

losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by

which the world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from

his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it

up. Then he dozed a while, from his weak condition, seeming

insensible to the cold. (69)

Even with his dying thoughts, Paul is concerned about the things he will never

get to do because he will never be a part of a high class society. Paul

regretted his

own personal rebellion. Just as his beautiful, perfect flowers had shone with

radiance

and basked in their glory of being b