There are many humbling sights of unfathomable magnificence, that have been described in some similar fashion, on the pale blue dot approximately ninety-three million miles away from the sun. Here there are many creatures that gather in groups and walk on two legs. These mysteriously coordinated, yet chaotic and lanky beings are humans. These gatherings are often called towns or cities for brevity’s sake. In these civilizations it is commonly known if life were a deck of cards, drawings straws, or a game of hungry hippos where the game is completely tilted one side, someone is going to come up short. In essence, there is a fine line between thriving and suffering. So much so, in some cases, trying does not matter in the least. While that's …show more content…
Whether it be arrogance or vanity the underlying cause of this is her tendency to exceed and outdo her mother’s unfair comparisons and criticisms. In this respect, she grew rebellious. Hearing whispers of debaucherous behavior afoot she decides to make an escape under the cover of night from her home. She see’s people, falls in love with the music being played but oddly some young man seemed to wag his finger in the air at her, that night they exchanged a relatively long conversation of seemingly no consequence. This presumed boy was Arnold Friend a character soon to return. That night but one of her daydreams, the music echoing through the naive mind of a carefree teenager her family is going out to eat and she refuses to go despite or possibly in spite of her mother’s scorn. The entity of Arnold appears again, almost timed with the departure of Connie’s family. She opens the door to see him standing by his car. They talk a bit and it’s clear he wants her to come along. He seems pushy yet it almost seems as if she’s charmed. That notion is dashed along with any sense of security with this line “ ‘Hey how old are you?’ His smiled faded. She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older-thirty, maybe more.”(Oates 319) From there, there is an unwanted …show more content…
There are many angles of some sort of disdain in grand and small ways with this tale. But none are more enigmatic than the plight of Bartleby. A peculiar man, who is said to cut through paperwork like humans through a rainforest, is hired to be a helping hand at a law copyist firm on law street. The fact that being a law copyist is a profession of monotonous connotation should speak partly to most characters in the tale. Bartleby was essentially surrounded by curmudgeons with slight superiority complexes but for a while, he got along doing a fair amount of work and remaining quiet. Time progresses and there begins a trend or quirk that escapes definition or reasoning. When asked if he would preform a task he would candidly and calmy reply “I’d prefer not to.”(Melville 27) This began with relatively trivial things. It seemed Bartleby was interested in the more pertinent material at first. Contrary to that notion his preferences slowly begin to worsen into insubordination at the workplace, though gradually at first. The narrator of the story, who is also the boss, begins to wonder where Bartleby had lived. What he had done in his spare time, things any curious soul would wonder about such an increasingly peculiar gentleman. Then, Bartleby is solely discovered by him that he is living in their very place of work. From here
Connie starts out in the story as someone that is self-absorbed, concerned for no one but herself. Arnold Friend is really the same way. He tells her that he saw her “that night and thought, that’s the one” (Oates 480). In spite of the words he uses, the reader knows that Arnold does not have any true feelings for Connie because he says “My sweet little blue-eyed girl” (Oates 483). Arnold is oblivious to the fact that Connie has brown eyes. “In Arnold’s view, Connie’s personal identity is totally unimportant” (Wegs 3).
Through plot, Oates demonstrates how Arnold Friend can be seen as a symbolic Satan. Plot starts when Arnold makes sure to tell Connie he is interested in her as he says,“Gonna get you baby” (Oates 1). Connie is in a drive-in restaurant for an older crowd when Arnold sees her for the first time. Once Connie leaves the drive-in dinner with a boy named Eddie, Arnold decides to make a move on Connie. Arnold uses foreshadowing to let her know he will meet her again. Just as Arnold says he is going to get Connie, he shows up in her driveway, creating a creepy situation. That Sunday afternoon, Connie is alone in her house while her parents and sister are on a picnic at one of their neighbor’s house, Arnold decides to use this opportunity to make his
The world is full of people who portray themselves as someone or something else. People
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, is a story about the quiet struggle of the common man. Refusing to bow to the demands of his employer, Bartleby represents a challenge to the materialistic ideology by refusing to comply with simple requests made by his employer. The story begins with the employer having trouble finding good employees. This is until the employer hires Bartleby. At first, Bartleby works hard and does his job so well that everyone has a hard time imagining what it would be like without him. After three days, Bartleby is asked by his boss to examine a legal paper. He replies with “I would prefer not to”. The story ends with Bartleby being discovered occupying the office at weekends and being taken into custody for
When Connie first hears a car pulling up in her driveway, her attention is immediately directed to her hair and looks. She isn’t concerned as much about who is outside or what they want, but how see will look to them. When she initially sees Arnold she is attracted to his style and car. He is muscular in tight faded jeans and a drives a bright gold jalopy. His image is everything that Connie has fantasized about and can relate to. Arnold is even playing
In the narrator’s office, Bartleby is faced with being holed up by his employer. The narrator tells us “I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of them… I placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy backyards and bricks, but which owing to subsequent erections, commanded no present view at all, though it gave some light… Still to further satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight…” (Melville, 301). He has essentially cut Bartleby off from any forms of communication by this set-up, alienating him from the other workers in the office and the narrator as well. We see Bartleby deteriorate through his time in the office, starting off as a hard worker, to denying to do certain parts of his job, and finally, to completely cutting himself off and not doing any work, much to the chagrin of the narrator and the others. The work itself could also be compared to that of what he did in the Dead Letter Office, copying dead letters day in and day out for the law. There is no real destination for what he does, the works he copies will end up gathering
Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” reveals different themes such as isolation and human morality test. In the story, the narrator runs a law firm and has a new Scrivener [Bartleby] who the narrator describes as“ the strangest I ever saw or heard of” (661). For the first few days, Bartleby is seen to be working fine, however, one day Bartleby just responds with “I would prefer not to” when anyone assigns a task to Bartleby (674). The real problems start to arise when Bartleby sleeps and eats at the office while denying to work or leave. The narrator illustrates the two main themes of human morals and isolation throughout the story with the use of biblical references to Bartleby as a leper and shows symbolism of the
“Nothing about Arnold Friend is genuine, except his violent intentions and his skill at psychological and physical intimidation. By the story’s end, Connie understands that she is not the confident flirt she thought, but a powerless pawn in the hands of a dangerous individual.” (Cormier)
Arnold Friend's façade gives the reader the feeling that something is wrong, as if Oates were trying to persuade Connie away from her impending doom. When Arnold first pulls into Connie's driveway, the reader is alarmed. Connie notices that he is actually much older than he appears and the reader knows that
Adding on to that, Connie’s shortfall that rock music has molded her has come to light when Arnold Friend gives sexual advances to her. Joyce Carol Oates shows this by writing, “It was the same program that was playing inside the house. “Bobby King?” she said. “I listen to him all the time. I think he’s great.” “He’s kind of great,” Connie said reluctantly.” “Listen, that guy’s great. He knows where the action is.” (p.3-para.2). This shows how Connie feels shocked that Arnold was also listening to the same music as she was when she was inside the house last time. Since she was incompetent in realizing how teenagers interpret the music than adult figures, Connie is vulnerable when Arnold threatens her to come to him because of the rock music that is being allotted to teenagers. To sum it up, the sexual song lyrics and the image of rock music that is normally played and embraced in the American culture has influenced Connie, a teenager, physically and mentally; therefore, she is taken advantage of by Arnold because of her immaturity and youth.
Her knowledge of her beauty allows her to draw attention to it from many guys of many ages. She loves the attention that she gets from these boys, and that often seduces her into the decisions that she makes. Her first encounter with Arnold Friend occurs when she is in the car with one of the boys she met, Eddie. She glances to her right and sees Arnold, in his car, staring at her. Arnold spoke with his lips to tell her “Gonna get you, baby”, and perhaps it is this threat that causes Connie to symbolize him as a jeopardy to her innocence that the reader sees in her nightmare (Oates 28).
Arnold Friend is a seductive man, or should I say ArN OLD FrIEND with a dark appearance hiding something deeper, something evil? Arnold, posing as a teen-age boy, is none other than the devil himself, which shows in his words and actions, and in his physical traits. From the very beginning of, Joyce Carol Oates', "Where are you going, Where Have you been?" a certain number of religious references are interspersed throughout. These references help to maintain a biblical feeling, as well as to set a path for Friend's entry into the story. They also foreshadow that; powers beyond a human level will be presented. Friend looks like one person in the beginning, but as the story unfolds, he is shown as someone else or
I should have been quite regulated with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically." (Melville 9). This nature of working disturbed the employer because he noticed the machine-like style of Bartleby's. Bartleby's lack of human qualities bothered the narrator, as he did later become concerned about Bartleby's condition and began to inquire of his past.
Herman Melville introduces Bartleby, a quiet, anti-social, unusual man. He works as a law-copyist for a lawyer and seems to only do work fitting his job title. Bartleby only does copying and nothing else. He does not examine his work afterwards like the other employees. When the whole office tries to get him to examine his work, he never refuses, he just “prefers not to.” This shocks the rest of the office as he just won’t do what they ask. “Preferring not to” implies that Bartleby does not see the point in his obligations. Bartleby is a strange case, as he works in isolation and does not socialize with anybody. However, Bartleby started out as a quick and efficient worker, as all it seemed he did was work. “There was no pause for digestion.
Bartleby’s co-workers are furious with his refusal to do what he is told. “I’ll just step behind the screen, and black his eyes for him!” (Melville) declares Turkey when asked by the lawyer. Nippers likewise proclaims, “I should kick him out of the office” (Melville). None of them take the time or effort to befriend or attempt to understand Bartleby.