In that "Where you are going," (or howevere the title is) I feel that the Friend guy is suppose to be Satan and the guy in the car Beezlebub. When he talks to the girl it feels like he is trying to, or did, brainwash her into getting her out of the house. I also felt that he was an illusion of some sort. From a short distance he looks like a man of her dreams, but when she started to really look at him she noticed that parts of him weren't real (like his height, parts of his face...). This is what I thought when I read it. If you agree or disagree feel free to blog or email me about what you think.
14 comments:
Oooh,I like that Paradise Lost connection Satan/Beelzebub (sp?) = Arnold/Ellie.
Agreed. However, i think there's more too it. Assuming this connection is where the author was getting at, you have to realize that with this idea, Satan can only manipulate a person's thoughts through their desires. Going with what you said of him being the man of her dreams, i think that might be stretching it. She's 15. She's exploring her boundaries. With her attitude towards people, she does what she can to see how far she can control them. "Friend" sees this, placates to it, and "again, making a reference towards Satan and (Sin)", she gets in over her head, and "lets him in" through her actions. Sort of the way you let Sin into your life being continuously doing just that one little bad thing, that leads to another, and another, etc. Then, when you see him for what he really is, he's just a spectral of who he is trying to imitate. (Shorter in size, not as attractive as she thought, age variation) According to scripture, YOU have to allow Satan into your life. (Hence why he will not come in--With a reference to the movie "The Constantine"--God and Satan can only Manipulate the situation, not control it entirely. YOU have to be the one to make the decision.
i believe that arnold friend was the embodiment of all the boys connie had been flirting with. she thought they were charming and arnold draws his physical appearance from what attracted her the most. but with these attractive components, he has also drawn in their flaws, things that she was not able to see, or chose not to, while flirting. now that these flaws stare her in the face coupled with terror, she finds them inexcusable and cannot ignore them.
i'm not saying that the boys were all short and much older then her. the flaws arnold possessed may have only been symbolic.
if i were to look at arnold as being representative of the devil, the flaws would be more likely caused by his innate imperfection and sin.
arnold's attempts to lure connie from her home are symbolic of evil tempting her to sin. the fact that he claimed he could not enter the house and drag her out means that sin cannot be forced upon anyone; they must make the conscious decision to commit any sin, just the way she made a decision to walk out the door.
What about the possibility that Arnold isn't Satan. What if he is representative of Connie's burgeoning, quite natural, sexuality. She could be dreaming, and Arnold could be part of her subconcious. After all, she is at an in-between age, just discovering that she is attractive to boys, but not really ready for an adult relationship.
the idea that he could be representative of her sexuality did occur to me, especially when he began to proclaim that she would love him and that he would be "gentle"...but then i recalled that on page 2, near the bottom it says "none of them bothered with church". this may seem unrelated but i feel that if he were her repressed sexuality, her mind wouldn't be dismissing him in such a religious context.
let me explain. connie is not a religious person, so why would the idea of sex be regarded in such a sinful manner? i do realize that non-religious people do have morals and i am not disputing that fact. it just seems that the idea of sin is one tied into christianity.
this is all merely speculation on my part, so frankly i'm still open to the idea that arnold represents sexuality. anyone care to give me some insight into that line of thinking?
I agree that the author was using satan as the man,who pressured the young girl.Satan in this reading made the girl his object by telling her what to do and what not to do. Like when he first saw her he knew that she was his lover. He was a creeper who knew everything about her and where her parents were that day and how long they were to be gone for. When he first got there she thought to herself what a handsome looking guy. Then to the screen door talking to him more she clearly saw that he was not a young man but an older guy. Satan takes control over her. But also it was her choice to walk out the door.
i don't think "satan" or arnold ever really told connie what to do. he said what he wanted, but he never really demanded anything of her. that's where the idea of sin comes into play. no one can make you do something. our actions are controlled by free will.
When reading the passage I was struck by the car being representive of her heart. It is meant to be extremly pretty and high class, much as she sees herself, there is a ding that is worn with the tag of CRAZY WOMEN DRIVER that could have been caused by her encounter with another female who damaged her image. Also, Friend's line about her belonging to him was represented by his name on the car. From this point it could be taken as her disconnecting from her actions. Her first sighting being amongst a crowd of questionable virtue, her heart was taken from her and occupied by Friend. No one in this particular section was named as if they are not truly part of her self. Friend could therefore represent a desire for attention that took from her her heart so she could give her body to others for notice. Also, the particular description of the burger joint, a bottle but squatter, strikes me as being similar in shape to a female uterus
In response to booradley's previous comment, I think the fact that Arnold represents Connie's sexuality fits in well with the idea that Connie doesn't go to church. I may be reading the story all wrong, but I feel like Connie subconsciously wants to have structured morals (like whether to have sex or not). She is constantly rebelling against her parents and getting away with it, but at the same time resents her sister, June, for getting their mother's praise and attention. If she truly desired simply the ability to do whatever she wanted, she wouldn't become jealous each time June's name is mentioned. She longs for the morals June has -- and that manifests itself as resentment -- but feels she could never reach June's standard and so gives up trying and becomes the "bad kid."
What I'm getting at is maybe the reason not attending church is mentioned in the story is to show that it's actually a big deal to Connie. She can't state that openly because it goes against her image, but just as she wishes she had the conscience of Perfect June, she wishes she could go to church because she sees that as a way of becoming the person she desires to be: one of better judgment than herself.
This of course doesn't happen, though, and instead she is confronted with something new: sex, represented by Arnold in the story. And without better discernment to guide her (discernment she believes she might have developed in church), Connie ends up letting sex into her life by following Arnold out the door.
Hope that made sense and was relevant...I feel like I kind of went off on a big tangent there...
no! that was brilliant! i can definitely understand it from that perspective now.
I think the ideas expressed through this thread are all relevent. I feel this passage was created for not 1 specific remnant of thought. I feel, however, that i am unable to make any original comments on this other than the obviously literal connotation of it being some guy using clever tone and dissuading her into nothing less than rape. Reading the handout we were given today hit me hard, and i could barely even scribble on the side of each paragraph. I felt too drawn into what was right there in front of me, screaming at her to just close the damn door. Don't know why it effected me the way it did, however, i hope my head clears if i happen to read it again.
I agree. When i was reading this, i kept making references to Paradise Lost. Arnold was Satan, and Ellie was Beezlebub. They were working as a team to tempt the girl into doing wrong. (i can't remember the girls name) At the end, i thought when she walking out of her house, it symbolized that she was steping into hell.
On the comment that the river flows past said about the bottle looking like a uterus. I took it a totally different way. In the reading it said that they never went to church and going to the burger joint was almost like church for them. And I took the squatter bottle as looking kind of like a church and the little dude on top being a symbol of god and how he's always watching. I could be completely wrong but that's just how I saw it.
rock lobster (awesome name by the way) i think you both make relevant points about the bottle. i honestly didn't look into its meaning at all but i could see oates as wanting both the idea of the church and the uterus being taken. she has a lot of double-symbolism in her work, as we discussed in class.
that's a really good insight though.
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