Throughout the text, figurative language is used to connect Paul to the mystical, fantastical fairy-tale landscape of his imagination. When Cather first describes Paul's reaction to music in the text, she uses one such simile:
It was not that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within him; something that struggled there like the genie in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman.
The part of Paul that yearns to be a part of something greater than himself—the part that yearns for adventure and beauty and romance—is emblematized by the genie in the bottle, the mythical entity. Paul wishes he could transmogrify into this mythical being and transcend his surroundings; his tragedy is that he cannot. In this regard, Paul is both the "genie in the bottle" and the "Arab fisherman" who discovers him (a clear allusion to A Thousand and One Nights, the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales). If Paul cannot harness the magic of the spirit within him, he wants to at least get close to that magic in any way he can: by possessing the "genie in the bottle" and taking brief glimpses at the spirit inside, or by attending the opera as an usher if he cannot attend as a patron.
