Arnold Friend, as friendly as he seems in the beginning, has the ability to persuade people into an estranged thought process. He is manipulative in his facts of conversation with Connie, who shows to eventually be easily coerced. Is it Connie’s immature weakness as a teenager or Arnold’s undoubted tactics that make her final decision to join him? In the beginning Connie is impressed with Arnold Friend. He was older and more mature. As a teenager, this is what she was attracted towards. She had dated older guys and was drawn in this same direction with him. Arnold starts the conversations by giving her complements and bragging about his car. He is trying to show Connie that they have the same interests.
In this context, Connie can be seen as the ego, which must decipher right from wrong. Friend is shady and eventually we discover him to be dangerous –as our Ids can be. Friend overpowers Connie, just as our Ids can overpower our egos to do certain things, and impact our decisions. Oates illuminates this concept in her story when she illustrates: “Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone back."
“A man has come for her, a rapist …” she says, then compares Connie’s fate to that of another story, by saying “Like Tarwater, Connie is about to be ‘raped by the devil himself. ’”(Oates). Not only does the author herself label Arnold as a “rapist” which would not be surprising, seeing that Arnold states “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away … because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret …” (Carol Oates 104) she also labels Arnold as “the devil”.
Adam Farmer obviously has some emotional/mental issues, so that makes him an Unbalanced Hero. However, Adam is self-aware. He knows exactly how he is thinking, feeling, acting, and reacting to things. He is very introspective and rather serious for his age. He also tends to act on impulse and does not think things through properly.
If Arnold had “found out all about [her]” like he says, he would know about her daydreams and need for an escape (Oates 5). This is the perfect way for Arnold to take her away because he knows she does want to leave. In conclusion, Connie wants to escape away from her neglecting family as she is always daydreaming and entering a different reality. Arnold provides for this escape by taking her away but she is torn with this decision as she still loves her family no matter what the circumstances. She does not want to make this decision but is forced to therefore making her
Arnold knows that she will be an easy target to corrupt and to pass his evil agenda along to. When Arnold shows up to her house, she fixes her hair; she’s on a date with the devil. Connie can’t help but to succumb to his desires due to her lack of support from her family; her hunger for being needed; and her lust for
She sees the boys who give her attention as subjugations who “dissolve into a single face that was not even a face but an idea” (Oates 675). But soon enough her dreams and music materialize into the shape of Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend is described as a muscular, older, and mysterious character. He seems to be a work of her imagination as he is ultimately an idea she created that would fit into her perfect fantasy world. Connie is defenseless to Arnold Friend’s manipulations mainly because she has no visible identity of her own.
However, this is countered when Connie notes that “he was much older—thirty, maybe more” (315), a fact that frightens her. What Arnold is to Connie is a challenge of her want to be an adult, and a trail of her ability to deal with adult issue. Such as a man who singles her out sexual reason. Her wish to be an adult is something she seeks while passively avoiding it. Her avoidance is marked by day dreams of puppy love romance, like a typical teenager; yet, her attractive flaunt to be mature is presented as if she seeks to be an
Pliny the Elder’s famous quote says, “Home is where the heart is.” Mim Malone goes on a vigorious journey when she learns her mom has a bad illness. Throughout David Arnold’s book, Mosquitoland Mim finds new friends/acquaintances while she was going through her journey. Also she is conquering obstacles and challenges in order to find herself, the real Mim Malone.
He mysteriously knows where Connie lives and invites himself to drive over to her house. Arnold assumes Connie’s friendship by convincing her that he knows everything and everybody, “I know your name and all about you” (Oates 201) when she never told him her name in the first place. He knew her friends, their names as well as what she did the night before. He also knew exactly where Connie’s family was, at a BBQ at Connie’s aunt Tille’s.
In the story, Connie looked at the phrase “man the flying saucers and she felt like “words meant something to her that she did not yet know” (p.) which if she was on drugs she might not be aware of the fact that what she is seeing is not real, but eventually when she is sober she will understand. The ambiguity of Arnold Friend leaves many unanswered questions for readers. Unless Joyce Carol Oates decides to reveal the real Arnold Friend, readers may never know if he was in fact the devil or just a figment of Connie’s
Throughout the story, there are many instances: the illogical time and settings, the similarity between Arnold and Connie and the unrealistic events show that the meeting between Connie and Arnold Friend is a dream. The dream is also a preparation for Connie before she steps onto the stage of being an adult. Connie’s dream begins when she refuses to go to her aunt’s house for barbecue party. She stays home, and under the warmness of the sun, she begins her day dreaming about love and the boy she has met the night before. In the beginning, the author writes “Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun…”
Overall, it is clear that Connie has three major psychological issues that caused her to make the decision to leave with Arnold Friend: insecurity, low self-esteem, and fear of relationships. While readers may not know where Arnold is taking Connie, they can infer the psychological problems from where she has been that led her to make the decision that she
Reluctantly, her parents allow her to stay home alone. A few hours later, a familiar gold jalopy pulls up to her house. The driver announces to Connie that his name is Arnold Friend. His unusual physical appearance, his tone of voice, and what he may symbolize frighten the Connie.
Through the duration of their “conversation”, Arnold was able to make her completely give up her free will to him. Connie gives up everything she had ever owned to him, even her “pounding heart [is] nothing that [is Connie’s]” after Arnold takes control of her. (Oates 11). Willingly doing whatever someone says regardless of consequence is enough to classify someone as a victim on its own. But not only was Connie doing whatever Arnold said, she was even giving herself to him.
Oates’s biography explained her fiction writing as a mixture violence and sexual obsession. The writing style definitely fits the plot point of this story with both of her literary ingredients being present in not only Arnold Friend but in Connie as well. The Protagonist Connie is presented in a very self-centered way. She is obsessed with her looks and often fantasizes about all the boys she meets.