Paul Johnson
1919Paul Johnson enters the story as a young American serviceman whose diffidence distinguishes him from the louder, more worldly Don Stevens. Assigned to the Post Despatch Service and studying at the Sorbonne, he has traveled with military dispatches but remains unsure of the politics and social ideas around him. His courtship of Eveline Hutchins develops from an awkward first meeting into a shared plan for marriage, then faces an unanticipated test when Eveline tells him she is pregnant.
Identity and Introduction
Don Stevens brings Paul to meet Eveline after J.W. Moorehouse leaves. Paul apologizes for intruding and explains that Don has spoken so much about her that he wanted to meet her; he has not seen a “real nice American girl” in a year. His deferential manner and whiny Minnesota accent initially irritate Eveline, but her response changes before he leaves: she likes him and defends him when Don dismisses him as sweet but somewhat sappy. Paul’s politeness is not simply a first impression. It recurs in his careful apologies and self-consciousness, even as he gradually becomes more at ease with Eveline.
The first meeting also establishes a contrast between the two men. Don is familiar enough with Eveline to expect to spend the night, but she refuses him; he leaves sullen. Paul, by contrast, is still tentative around her. When he appears again during the armistice celebrations, Eveline has become separated from her friends in the crowded Paris streets. She breaks through a ring of dancers and kisses Paul, who is on the edge of the crowd with Don. Paul looks embarrassed but pleased. His presence offers Eveline a point of connection amid the revelry, though the scene does not make him its confident center: he remains the apologetic young man caught up in events larger and noisier than himself.
The Armistice and Paul’s Outlook
Paul has been traveling back and forth with dispatches. In Eveline’s tiny apartment after the celebrations, he speaks of the army, European cities, and the people he has met, including Eveline and Don. He worries that he knows little about the subjects she and Don discuss. When he wonders what everyone will do if peace really has begun, Eveline asks him to call her by her first name. Paul says he believes the peace is real, invokes Wilson's Fourteen Points, and expresses admiration for Wilson despite Don’s criticism. He even allows himself to hope this might be the last war.
That hope is tempered by his limited understanding of politics. On May Day, Don’s account of the coming general strike has made Paul anxious about what may happen. He comes to Eveline’s apartment in civilian clothes, borrowed because he thinks he should not be in uniform. Eveline says she may join the strike, and Paul is glad to accompany her, though his concern is personal as well as political: he says he will feel easier if he knows where she is should trouble arise. He calls her reckless, while she notices how handsome he looks out of uniform. When she asks his age, Paul says he is twenty-one; Eveline tells him she is five years older. His embarrassment is visible in the coffee he spills on his trousers and in his stiff, blushing response when she kneels to wipe it away.
Paul’s unease extends beyond the immediate danger of the streets. He is tired of wearing a uniform and wants to return to civilian life, even though that will mean going back to work. The Sorbonne lectures have not engaged him; he finds the atmosphere too restless and the professors’ repeated denunciations of the Germans tiresome. Later, he admits that he does not know much about the political arguments around him. He imagines returning home, traveling around the country, and working as a harvest hand to learn more. Don, who met him when Paul’s transport section was billeted near the Marne River, describes him as lacking social ideas and says he needs to read Marx. The novel thus presents Paul as neither a political guide nor a settled opponent of politics: he is a young man aware of his ignorance and searching for a way to understand the world beyond what he has heard.
From Companionship to Commitment
During the May Day unrest, Paul and Eveline’s closeness takes shape through ordinary acts of care and proximity. He waits while she gets dressed, goes out to bring coffee, and accompanies her as they see what is happening. After they eat with Don, two American military police officers enter the restaurant. Paul and Eveline try to look French until the officers leave; Paul is frightened that they would have arrested him for being out of uniform and sent him to the Roo Saint Anne. Eveline tells him that he might have been shot at sunrise, then insists he go back and change. The encounter makes his civilian clothes more than a flirtatious change in appearance: they expose him to the threat of military discipline.
That evening, Paul and Eveline go to his hotel room. After they have gone to bed, Paul falls asleep with his head on her shoulder. Eveline slips away to turn off the light and open the window, then returns to his warm, relaxed body. The rain sounds on the glass roof below, while a trapped puppy whines somewhere in the building. Eveline cannot sleep; the puppy’s confinement echoes something shut up inside her. The tenderness of the scene is therefore accompanied by unease, foreshadowing that intimacy has brought consequences neither of them has yet confronted.
The next day they spend together. Eveline phones the American Red Cross to say she is sick, and Paul forgets the Sorbonne. At a café near the Madeleine they make practical plans: return to the United States as soon as they can, find jobs in New York City, and marry. Paul expects to study engineering in his spare time and believes he can get work with grain and feed merchants in Jersey City through friends of his father. Eveline hopes to restart her decorating business. Paul appears happy and confident, no longer merely apologetic. Eveline tells herself that he has substance and that something can be made of him. The plans make their affection concrete, but they are still plans rather than an accomplished return or marriage.
Pregnancy and the Altered Future
The following weeks are lightheaded and financially precarious. Paul and Eveline spend their pay early and rely on inexpensive set-meal restaurants crowded with students, working people, and poor clerks. In June, while walking through the forest at St. Germain, Eveline suffers spells of nausea and weakness and has to lie down several times. Paul grows worried. They eventually cross the Seine on a small ferry, and halfway across Eveline tells him she is going to have a baby.
Paul responds by acknowledging that he had not planned for a child and that he should have married her sooner. He says they will marry right away and that he will find out what permission is required to marry in the American Expeditionary Forces. His answer combines alarm about the change in his plans with a commitment to take responsibility. Eveline dryly reminds him that the change affects her plans too, comparing their situation to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Paul asks what he can do to make it up to her and promises to do his best.
Their return journey to Paris ends not in a neat resolution but in silence. In a third-class train compartment, they sit facing one another, knees touching, unable to take in the passing suburbs. Eveline says she wants to have the baby and that they must go through everything in life. Paul nods; as the train enters a tunnel, she can no longer see his face. The ending confirms their shared intention to face the pregnancy, but it does not show the marriage, the birth, or the future they had mapped out at the café. Paul’s significance lies in that unresolved turn: a young man who began as an apologetic, politically inexperienced soldier now has to meet the obligations of an intimate relationship, with the hopeful plans of peacetime suddenly made uncertain.
