Arnold Friend Essay

Connie did not exactly understand how she found herself in the passenger seat of Arnold Friend’s gold-painted jalopy. All she knew was that just a few minutes ago, just a mile or two back home, just a tick and a tock away, she could feel her chest heaving and her stomach twisting right behind a screen door with her eyes staring right into Arnold Friend’s face. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember what exactly he looked like, even if his face was only inches away from her own. Maybe

characters and also a protagonist is Arnold Friend, who is possibly

Connie hesitantly walked towards the car. Arnold Friend, in an irritated voice, yelled at Ellie to move to the back seat. “I told you so many times to move and you’re still here?” he said. “I’m so sorry,honey. He will be out of the front seat, and you will sit down, and we will ride off into the sunset together.” Ellie got out of the car to move to the back seat and that’s when Connie was finally able to look at him carefully. His body was short and his face looked extremely old. Wrinkles

experience when she is confronted by Arnold Friend while at her home alone. She does however show great resilience in her uphill battle between her own desires and fears, swoon by this man and his mystery but terrified by the implications he makes. She makes a decision not of self-preservation but of selfless courage to protect her family whom she loves dearly. At this pivotal moment in the story one could agree with Tierce and Crafton as they suggest that Arnold Friend frees her of this mystery, of these

two-faced, insecure girl with a smart mouth and resentment towards her family members. In the beginning of the story, Oates sets the scene with Connie out with her friend, whom she then ditches to hang out with some random guy she met at the diner. Everything seems to be going predictably, until the unimaginable happens when Arnold Friend pulls into her driveway, beckoning her to come outside since he knows her family isn’t home. He knows this because he has convinced himself that Connie is in love

Arnold 's Friend "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home"(200). This quote depicts the life that Connie lives. Connie is a tall, skinny, and pretty fifteen year old girl. She loves to go out with her friends, and spend her evenings with boys at movies and diners. This Connie, that loves to have a good time, is unknown to her family. She lives a totally different life when she is at home. Connie appears to be a totally different person to her

these people genuinely? Arnold Friend, in the short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, managed to deceive with his false characteristics. Arnold Friend was brought to life from Oates’s imagination of the mischievous serial killer Charles Schmid. Arnold Friend and Charles Schmid similarly attempted to delude with false attributes, had an interest in women, deceived women, both tried to create a false imagine for themselves, however Friend knew about everything about

neighborhood, from the viewpoint of a teenager: drive-ins, dating, restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, and "ranch"-type homes. This setting looks a lot like a typical American development today, a few pop cultural references date the story: Arnold Friend's get-up with slick hair and tight pants is a nod to the leading teen stars of the day, such as Elvis Presley and James Dean. Arnold's companion Ellie is listening to a radio show on a hand-held transistor radio, (first sold in 1954) the same

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

Joyce Carol Oate’s a closer look at Arnold Friend In Joyce Carol Oate’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” we are introduced to Arnold Friend. Friend embodies a classical villain that readers have been exposed to throughout the history of time, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Much of Friends character is modeled after Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood‘s own wolf. Certainly there are obvious differences in “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” and in the folk tale of Little