Motifs In Annie Carol Oates

Arnold Friend’s layers of deception. Connie’s blindness is the pretext of her loss of innocence

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reflects three main ideas throughout the story. Life, Death, and Immortality. These ideas are carried out throughout the book to emphasize Henrietta’s impact before and after death and on the science world. HeLa cells are the most important scientific discovery in the past 100 years. Henrietta Lacks is the donor and origin of these cells that have helped create vaccines and treatments for many diseases and medical conditions.

Out of the numerous recurring themes throughout the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, two themes stood out to me. Those themes showed that there are several characters that are searching for answers or struggling to come to terms with their emotions. Two characters have a particularly difficult time with one of these two themes. The first being Deborah Lacks, the daughter of Henrietta Lacks, she is searching for answers pertaining to her mentally challenged and deceased aunt, Elsie. Deborah starts her quest at the mental hospital where Elsie was living at “Nineteen fifty-five was the year they killed her..I want them records..I know it wasn’t good..why else would they get rid of them?” (Skloot 269). Deborah is obviously upset by

Once Arnold Friend unexpectedly arrives to Connie’s house, “her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it, and she whispered, ‘Christ. Christ,” wondering how bad she looked” (3). Connie thought she recognized the mysterious man in the driver’s seat, the kind of guy she is used to attracting. She saw his hair as

Evidently, Connie was manipulated by her youthful wild dreams, therefore eventually became blinded by her surroundings at the end. Theme enhances the idea of the story as the character leads herself into a destructive internal journey. The central idea of the story is identified and unifies the moral

In contrast, by implying in her short story that Connie is already sexually active, author Joyce Oates deepens the terror of the screen-door meeting by focusing not on just the sexually persuasive nature of Arnold Friend but also on the demonic trance-like state he uses in order to control his victims.

Oates starts off by introducing the story’s 15 year old protagonist, Connie. Connie is symbolic of innocence and good. However, Connie has

In spite of the way that Connie tries to show the nearness of being a created woman who has learned about men, her involvement with Arnold reveals this is only an execution. She has made an engaging grown-up personality through her dress, hairstyle, and general direct and gets the thought she hopes for from young fellows. Regardless, Connie dumbfounds her ability to summon thought from young fellows with her longing to truly have

The encounter that Connie experiences with Arnold Friend involves a series of events that would lead someone to believe that he in fact was a figment of her subconscious, or a nightmare. Before their rendezvous, Connie had been sitting “with her eyes closed in the sun”, daydreaming (29). This is the first clue Oates presents the reader to show that Connie falls asleep. In addition to this, when Connie “opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was” (29). When a person is involved in a dream, it is common that they

She tries to relate to sex through popular music that romanticizes relationships and life. The short reveals how it affects Connie when she is listening to a popular radio station, “…bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless little room” (Oates 424). Additionally, Connie felt her date with Eddie was similar to “the way it was in movies and promised in songs”(Oates 424). She felt she was living the dream and was beginning to relate to this sexualized, romantic media. In Marie Mitchell and Olesen Urbanski’s literary review of the story, they state “the recurring music then, while ostensibly innocuous realistic detail, is in fact, the vehicle of Connie's seduction and because of its intangibility, not immediately recognizable as such” (1). However, Arnold Friend was quick to remind her of her young age and innocence at the end of the story.

During the conversation between Connie and Arnold Friend, she experiences a dramatic moment so intense that it cannot be avoided or ignored. Her attempt was creating a sexy appearance and fascinating the boys in the local diner delivers as her experiment to analyze new fields as well as a new side of herself. However, until Arnold comes into the story, her expeditions have always been closed into security. She may go into an dark alley with a boy for a short period, but no matter what happens there,

Connie has a tendency to daydream, so she daydreams about Eddie and thinks about “how sweet he always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs” (625). She is soon snapped out of this fairy tale when a man named Arnold Friend confronts her. He actually treats her like she is the grown woman that she wants to be and this aspect is very scary for Connie. He pulls up driving a car and his car is a symbol for an underlying theme in the story. It is evident that only men drive in the story, never women. The only time a woman drove in the story is the dent in Arnold’s car and written in it was “done by a crazy woman driver”(627). Not only is Connie young, but also she is a woman and the car represents the mobility and freedom that women do not tend to have during this time period. Arnold says things to her that mirror her search for independence. He knows so much about her, from her name to her family’s name, to the fact that her whole family was gone at the time. He was the perfect package representing independence in a way that Connie was familiar with. He stood in a relaxed way, he wore clothes that she recognized, his smile was friendly and dreamy, and her talked in a “singsong way”(629). Despite all of these factors, something was still not right about him in Connie’s eyes. These factors

Often, the circumstances of a marriage can leave the people involved feeling empty and unloved. These feelings of hopelessness can lead people to make uncharacteristic choices. Adultery, even in a marriage without love, can have a dramatic effect on the people involved. For the adulterous partner, the feelings of guilt and anxiety can often lead to overwhelming confusion. The short story "The Lady with the Pet Dog" by Oates, shows how the act of cheating creates confusion in the mind of the main character thorough use of an unchronological structure, and unusual character development.

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.

            In this story, the narrator gives us the important clues that lead us to the theme by letting us know what the characters think.  For example, when the Jerry's mother says "Of course he's old