Paul and Trevor These Stories Tell Us

¶ … Paul and Trevor

These stories tell us that there are as many kinds of rebellions as there are rebels - in different strata of society and in different times. Some rebel against the external world, some, against the inner world, although all rebellion is inherently internal or inner.

Trevor seems to have become a rebel because of peer pressure, especially among the poor. Gangs form because there is nothing more gainful or meaningful to do, as in the case of Womrsley Common Gang of London. The young, especially, must acquire a sense of identity and belonging, no matter what identity or belonging it is. Trevor submits himself to the humiliation of initiation, especially because of his shy nature. He has relished the bright idea of burglarizing the rickety house of Old Misery and it becomes his passport to leadership in this thugs' association. Life is as simple but unsatisfying and dangerous to other youngsters living on the social and economic edge of society, like Trevor. Any kind of leadership is all that he comes after to crown him with any achievement and he gets crowned. When their burglary is discovered in the end, however, he loses that leadership again when he loses control over the gang.

Trevor and Paul are both young and are both unconscionable thieves. In Trevor, thievery is almost casual, although he does not resort to anything more criminal than that and vandalizing an already collapsing house. The merely internal destruction of Old Misery's house reflects the inner sense of destruction in these young people, who want to hide their criminality from the outside only. The Gang retains external cautiousness still by doing so. And Trevor's refusal to hurt Old Misery is likewise an expression of humaneness that is simply out to thrill itself at the expense of others in society.

Greene writes about this kind of rebellion straightforwardly and even makes light of it in the end when the driver of Mr. Thomas laughs when nothing is left of Old Misery's house. It can be a way of saying that there is no security in weak houses like Old Misery's and that security should mean much more than that to him.

But Paul's rebellion is very inner, but which expresses itself in the outside world as signs and symbols grossly mis-interpreted. He is much more complicated than the roguish Trevor whose only aim is physical survival. Paul wants much more from life - even momentarily. He want to live enormously - so enormously that his physical structure breaks under it and he thinks that his mortal life is insufficient to contain his yearnings to live. Art is the nearest approximation of that yearning and that rage that ignores social rules. His outgrown clothes, frayed velvet, opal pin and red carnation on his buttonhole are outlandish expressions of his feeling of unfitness in a narrowly constricted society, especially that one he grew up in on Cordelia street. His defiant and contemptuous behavior gives that uneasiness away. These do not mean that he is gay or a weakling. It may be more of a distaste or a lack of appetite for formalities in society. His gestures - sarcastic smiles and statements, looking out the window un-attentively during class and aversion towards human touch - reveal his separateness from the tide of mankind.

Paul, though and unlike Trevor, still minds what others think of him, that is why, he hides behind symbols and fronts. He (Paul) still feels concerned about what society can be talking about when his back is turned. But Trevor's rough times have no sensitiveness towards human opinion. Paul is also after the finer things in life, such as the art pieces and "Raffeli's gay studies at Paris. He steals to give in the concupiscent appetites of the good life by living high in New York, in a costly hotel and in the theater. Trevor's motivations, however, are more direct and more irascible. Both of the, however, live for the enjoyment of the moment and gamble everything in the future for it.

Another difference is that Trevor needs company - even a gang of thieves - to help him realize a sense of identify and belongingness for himself. Paul, on the other hand, does not need another to make his world up. He has his own fantasies bundled up inside him and buys these fantasies when he manages to steal a thousand dollars from people who have learned to trust him. Another similarity between these two young rebels is their disregard for the trust that others have endowed them with.

If Trevor comes from the lower economic stratum of society, Paul appears to come from a higher-level, perhaps middle-class, level in Pittsburgh (where Willa Cather comes from). He has a father who tries his best and worst to keep him in school but fails. Paul even delights in getting suspended, perhaps as a symbol of achievement.

Another difference is that Paul lives in fantasies, but Trevor does not. Paul sees the people of Cordelia street as unworthy of what he imagines himself to be and behaves sarcastically towards them, especially his teachers. He wears unbecoming clothes and loses attention to show that he does not belong there. But his rebellion exacts a much higher price in his mind, because he has no power to alter society without forfeiting something of magnitude - his liberty or his life.

Trevor's ambition is only for the day and does not involve his entire existence.