The Pied Piper of Tucson

11). Connie is fixated on her beauty and the role beauty plays in life. The first thing she thinks about when the two boys that she has never seen before pull up her driveway is how she looks. Some may say that because of the lack of control Connie possesses over her beauty, Arnold Friend, her eventual abductor, is attracted to her. He sees her naivety and sets forth to capture it.

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.

Connie does not want to be the nice and innocent pretty girl. She wants to be known for being very sexual. In the story she makes fun of her sister June because she is very modest and not sexual and causes conflict with their family. Also June is overweight twenty-four years old and still living at home. But she also does chores and does them without complaining to her parents. While Connie is a way from home she has two totally different ways of acting. Be that as it may, Arnold friend ‘s landing in her home drives her two sides to consolidate fiercely. As it were, Connie is not completely sexual until Arnold's interruption into her home until then; her sexuality was something outside of her "actual" self, the self that she permitted her family to see. Arnold also has a friend named Ellie. While Arnold drives up to Connie’s house Ellie stays in the car and she listens to music while Arnold speaks to Connie. Also Connie’s mother shows a large amount of frustration towards her and the way she acts and dresses. Connie and her mother fight constantly. But towards the end of the story when Connie is attacked my Arnold she cries out to her

Arnold friend finds Connie “cute” (321) and a “pretty girl” (324). So now the reader knows for sure that Connie is very beautiful on the outside. The quote, “I took a special interest in you” that was said by Arnold friend, assures the reader that other characters do find her appealing. Now that the reader knows that Connie is beautiful and that other characters find her pretty, he/she understand why Connie has two personalities. In order to keep getting attention from the other characters she has to keep up a good appearance. Connie’s mother kept comparing her to sister June, “‘Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? How’ve you got your hair fixed-what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk.’ . . .If June’s name was mentioned her mother’s tone was approving, and if Connie’s name was mentioned it was disapproving.” (317, 319) Connie’s mother did not approve of what she does. Connie kept doing things that her mother did not like. Connie did not want to be like her sister, and yet her mother kind of raises her to be like her sister. The reader knows that Connie does not have a good relationship with her sister. The reader start to feel bad for Connie, she has to be like the person she doesn’t like to be approved by her mother. Now the reader can fully understand why she does not have a good relationship with 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).

As stated earlier, Connie does not receive attention from her parents. Due to this, Connie has little confidence, as shown when she constantly checks herself in the mirror and tries hard to look nice, specifically towards boys. Connie has an extreme interest in boys, as stated when “her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been” (Oates 122). She fantasizes about boys and hangs out with them a lot, even ditching her girlfriends to do so. She knows she is pretty and enjoys receiving attention and compliments from boys. This reveals how Connie is overly attached to boys, relying on them and their validation to boost the self-confidence and attention she never received from her parents. Furthermore, she is so absorbed with male attention and their opinions, that when Arnold pulls into her driveway, her immediate reaction is to check the mirror to make sure she looks attractive (Oates 123). However, in the end, Connie’s vanity takes a shift when Arnold threatens to hurt her family if she does not give in to him, saying “‘they don’t know one thing about you and never did and honey, you’re better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you’” (Oates 135). This event is extremely significant, as

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

Thank you for your response and question. I could only hope that her family would notice she was not home. Now, how long would it take? I think maybe a few days depending on if she had things around the house that she had to do. I don’t know any other outcomes that come to mind when Connie is basically being forced in to this guy’s car to be driven to only god knows where to possibly be raped or murdered all because she was getting any kind of affection from her mother and aunt who were too busy comparing Connie to her sister. I wish we could have known how long has the house and Connie’s family been watch by this guy. I kind of wish this story had a better ending or maybe an alternate ending where she was able to get away and get help or Arnold’s

Arnold took advantage of Connie’s vulnerability. For once, Connie was compared to June without being second best. He praised her beauty with compliments for example calling her “a pretty girl ‘’ (292) something her mother had never done and he told Connie that she was “the one’’ (297). Unlike her father, Arnold admitted he took “a special interest ‘’ (292) in her. He took the time to investigate all about her (292). Arnold gave Connie compliments, promises of affection, and attention, things she was not used to. Arnold reminds Connie that her family never showed interest in her, he reminded her that they knew anything about her, and reassured her that she was better than them. (300). Connie then made the absurd decision to get in the car with a man who proved to me dangerous and a possible psychopath.

Charles Schmid’s accomplice came in the form of John Saunders, a close friend of Schmid’s. Together, Schmid and Saunders picked up Alleen Rowe, convincing her to get in the car and tag along on a double date with them and another girl. They later drove her out to the desert and beat her to death with a rock (Gribben). In the story, Arnold Friend also features an accomplice, a menacing creep named Ellie Oscar. Similarly to John Saunders, Ellie Oscar plays a quiet, right-hand-man role, letting his ally do most of the work. The unmistakable resemblances between Charles Schmid’s and Arnold Friend’s accomplices point towards Joyce Carol Oates directly basing her character on the tactics of the real life serial killer.

Tucson is one of the oldest towns in the United States. Tucson was the capital of the Arizona Territory from 1867 to 1877. This town had the progress of innovation of a metropolitan community and had the friendly, caring atmosphere of a small town. This town had a rich cultural heritage center around a unique blend of Native Americans, Spanish, Mexican and American influences. This small town has historical and contemporary American architecture and prehistoric native layout.

Connie hangs out with her friends at the mall, but sometimes they sneak off to a restaurant where the older kids are. “Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out”(324). One time when they go to this restaurant she see’s a man who grabs her attention. “He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin.”(325) She couldn’t help but glance back to see if he was watching and he was. “He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you baby,”(325). This part of the story is what foreshadows the ending where she has make a decision that means sacrificing herself to

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.

     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 was telling her that he thought she was cute, and she said back to him, that she didn’t know who he was. He told her that his name was Arnold Friend, and he acted like she should know him. They kept going at each other, Arnold from the driveway and her from the house (behind the door). Arnold seemed to know everything about her family. He knew that they were out for the day and that they wouldn’t be back. He told her that he thought that she was cute and that she should come for a ride in the car. She told him flat out that she didn’t want to, but he told her that if she hadn’t done so that he was going to hurt her family. (Oates 367) He told her too that if she picked up the phone and called the police that he was going to come into the house, but otherwise he wouldn’t come in.Connie was terrified she didn't know what to do so she put the phone down “Cmon honey”. She put her hand to the door, and walked towards Arnold Friend. He said to her “My sweet little blue eyed girl.”(Connie had brown eyes)…Oates tells in the end “Connie had never seen so much land before and did not recognize it except to know that she was going to it.” (Oates 377) Arnold friend took Connie away……