[2] New York City was historically known as a destination for those seeking adventure and new opportunities, and often described as a center of fine living and society.

[3] Indeed, in the story, New York City is described as lavish and extraordinary, in contrast to the descriptions of Paul's home, Pittsburgh, which he despises.

Paul stays awake for the rest of the night in the basement, imagining what would happen if his father mistook him for a burglar and shot him.

Paul's few days of impersonating a rich, privileged young man bring him more contentment than he had ever known, living the lavish lifestyle of his hopes and dreams.

Eventually, he decides against using the gun; instead, the thought of returning to his old lifestyle pushes Paul to kill himself by jumping in front of a train.

[9] Many critics have attributed his suicide to the forces of alienation and stigmatization facing a young, possibly homosexual, man in early 20th-century America.

[13] Jane Nardin also explores the possibility that Paul's character is gay, and that this is a metaphor for a general feeling of being an outsider or not fitting in with a specific group of people.

[14] Author Roger Austen states that Paul might be understood as a homosexual character because of the "depiction of a sensitive young man stifled by the drab ugliness of his environment and places the protagonist in an American literary tradition of 'village sissies'".

[15] Wayne Koestenbaum reads the story as a possible portrait of Willa Cather's "own desire for aesthetic fulfillment and sexual nonconformity".

[19] Hayley Wilhelm of the University of New Haven, suggests the possibility that Paul has autism due to certain signs and symptoms he displays throughout the story.

He states "They also come when Cather is still extolling the big-city cultural life before she learned to love the bleaker environment and warmer people of the American Midwest that she later wrote about in short works and novels that made her famous".

In addition, Cather made alterations to the title, paragraph simplification, punctuation and dictation based around her state of life and surroundings 15 years after publication.