Short Story Arnold Friend

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).

The world is full of people who portray themselves as someone or something else. People

She knows he is threatening her and her family but it seems she is controlled by an unknown source that makes her go with him. Someone could argue that Connie went willingly to protect her family, but that seems weird since she tried to call for help. When she tried to call for help it seemed like Arnold Friend was controlling her so that she wasn’t able to call for help. Arnold Friend has a mysterious control over Connie that makes the reader believe that she is under his control. The story says, “She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn’t really hers either”(Oates 325). This could prove that she didn’t have control over the situation, kind of like someone or something was controlling her.

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).

The beginning of the short story enlightens the reader into the relationship that Connie has with her mother. Connie’s mother does not agree with her admiration for herself. This is due to Connie’s mother’s own insecurities. Oates writes, “Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 3043). Connie was aware that her mother was jealous of the way she looked and envied her young adolescence. Her mother was nagging her daily and constantly comparing her to her sister. The constant comparison and nagging left Connie to deal with internally judging herself. Oates expresses Connie’s strong unhappiness with her mother by stating “…but around his bent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (3043). Connie’s frustration with her mother lies deep within her internal judgments. She repeatedly obsesses over her mother’s words and desires attention from older males. Even though she does not feel as if she fits in with her sister June, there are some characteristics that she likes about her sister. One of these characteristics is that June is older. Since June is older, Connie is allowed to go out when her sister does which allows her to embrace her rebellious adolescence. She wishes she was older and battles with her internal misconception of her age. In the story, Connie is at an age where she is experimenting with her surroundings. Young girls are regularly comparing themselves to their friends and their elders. The obsession of comparison leaves Connie continuously striving to be better and to increase her attractiveness. Her misconceptions suggest to her that she needs to be more sexual. Her varying internal conflicts leave her with a void that she tries to fill otherwise.

This thought, however, ignores the insecurities she has and the decision she has already made in her mind. After all, Connie did know that Arnold Friend was dangerous, she was wary of him when he first showed up and when she makes out his age she gets put on her guard even more and eventually threatens to call the police on them. Then, Arnold says words that ring through the mind of Connie: “…I promise it won’t last long and you’ll like me the way you get to like people you’re close to. You will. It’s all over for you here…”. These short sentences echo through her mind as they remind her of the relationships she has in her life. Connie realizes that will never be intimate with Arnold Friend because she cannot have a relationship like that with anybody. Because of her insecurities, Connie thinks she deserves this ending. She will go with Arnold not because she wants to, but because nothing can hold her, back she wanted to explore and have an adventure, but the adventure was thrust upon her too

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,

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

To begin, the protagonist of the story is Connie, is a rebellious eighteen year old blonde, who does not accept the role that her mother puts her in. The mother expects Connie to be the “nice” girl, who dresses and acts like her

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

Moral and social beliefs were being challenged and the youth of America, while coming of age, were rebelling against their parent’s ideals and creating their own culture. The birth of a social movement was upon the world and issues such as sexual freedom, feminism and other civil rights were hot topics during the years prior to Oates writing this story. It is these social changes and society’s interest in them that creates the foundation for the setting that breathes life into this story. Without this foundation, the coming-of-age story of Connie, not to mention American society, and her journey from the innocence of the 1950s into the bitter reality of the turbulent times of the 1960s would have been lost.

As the story progresses, it is Sunday morning and her family is getting ready to attend a family bar-b-queue. However, Connie insists on not attending and is left alone at home. As she is washing her hair, she hears an unfamiliar car driving up to her house and her heart begins to pound for she does not want the visitor to see her undone. When Arnold Friend, a man she has seen at the restaurant before, but has never spoken to, shows up on her doorstep, she is someone curious as to why he is visiting her. Throughout the scene, he is attempting to persuade Connie into taking a ride with him and his friend Ellie. The more he speaks to her, he reveals to her that he knows many things about her such as her friends, her name, and family and where they are currently at. As the scene develops, Connie no longer has interest in Arnold for she now is scared and is fearful of what his intentions are.

In a small town, an adolescent teen emerges from the mirror. “where are you going, where have you been’’, by Joyce Carol Oates is a story about Connie, fifteen-years-old, intrigued by the way she looks. Her mother fears that one day, Connie will turn into who she was at fifteen, but it seems as if its too late. A naïve teen girl like Connie is always demonstrating rebellious actions behind her parents back; hanging with boys. One night, a boy named Eddie asks Connie out to dinner. Like any ‘’boy crazy” girl, she leaves her friend at the restaurant counter. Unknowingly, Connie’s life would change from that point forward. A petrifying man appears from a gold convertible. He seems to know more about Connie than Connie knows about herself. As Eddie and Connie walk through the parking lot, the man yells out “gonna get you, baby” (Oates). Connie hurries along to avoid the situation.

     Does she take the chance on calling the cops? Or should she get in the car with Arnold Friend? Either way I think she knew that the outcome was going to be death. The story ends with Connie on her way out to the car. She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back sage somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited. (164) Why does Connie make this decision? The story does not say, but as the reader I think that Connie was thinking if she stayed that he would harm her and her family, but if she went with

He insisted he was her lover, and other things. But she always replied telling him he was crazy. Connie tried to make excuses after excuses and he dismissed each one of them, she even threatened to call the police. He promised her, if she did not call the police; he would not step foot inside the house. Connie was scared, well more like traumatized at this point, the door was locked, her kitchen looked unfamiliar to her, her heart was panting, and she did not want to enter another part of her house. Arnold threatened and questioned whether she wanted something bad to happen to her loved ones, which she didn’t. Connie proceeded to go to another room and pick up the phone, but there was nothing but an uproar coming from the other end of the phone, scared she couldn't do anything but scream and cry out for her parents. After a while she regained her mental and put the phone back like Arnold asked her to, she thought she would never see her family again or even lay in her bed. Connie listened to the voice that happened to be Arnold and finally went with him, although she was full of fear and