Representing Everyones Evil - Essay Example

– This is the work completed so far. Because of the delays on the order, I have not been able to complete fully. Please add an extension to the deadline and I will complete the rest when I get back to work tomorrow. Student name Instructor name Course name Date Representing Everyone’s Evil Impressions of people are often the first thing we use to judge others, but are not always as correct as we assume them to be. For example, in the business world, it is often warned that “Within the first few seconds, people pass judgment on you – looking for common surface clues. Once the first impression is made, it is virtually irreversible” (Sterling, 2002). However, this process is not limited to just the business world and is not limited to just those times when you’re trying to make an impression. Every time two people come into contact, this process is enacted to some degree or another and can be based on a number of factors, such as a person’s name. In many cases, people go out of their way to appear to be something they are not, often as a means of hiding or disguising the evil they have within. This is a universal human tendency as everyone has a little evil in them and yet everyone tries to hide this fact from others. In short stories such as “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates through her characters Connie and Arnold Friend and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the authors create characters that represent the evil that lurks in all people. Making judgments based on immediate impressions is an automatic human response. As Martha Brockenbrough (2008) suggests, there does seem to be a place in our brains where our impressions are sorted out lightning fast on an emotional level that are based not as much on what’s actually seen but instead on a combination of factors. This lightening fast assessment of the other person is not always fully based upon the clues that the other person presents. “The conclusions this secret room in your mind generates are based on your experiences and your environment, which includes social stereotypes that you might even reject on a conscious level” (Brockenbrough, 2008). As a result, people have a tendency to see what they think they see – previous expectations lead one to believe what one wants to believe. In presenting their characters, Oates and O’Connor illustrate how one’s impressions are often wrong because they are based on first impressions that have been carefully crafted by the individual making the impression. Within Oates’ story, the first character to be introduced is Connie, a teenaged girl just beginning to discover the world outside of her parents’ home. As this character is examined, a trope is revealed in her name itself. One of the meanings of the word ‘trope’ indicates it is a word or phrase that is used in a figurative rather than a literal sense. Connie’s name suggests a person involved in a con, or farce of some kind as she certainly is. Within her character, she demonstrates a number of lesser evils of vanity and self-centeredness that exist in the hearts of most people to greater or lesser degree. At home, she is the typical lazy but innocent teenager, but in public she attempts to become someone quite different. “Everything about her had two sides to it; one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out” (Oates). She is not what she seems to be which makes her a ‘con’ artist. Her mother understands her to be irritating and lazy but generally innocent while Oates makes it clear that Connie has been sexually active in opening her story with an example of Connie’s typical evenings out as she ditches her friend in order to spend the evening with a boy named Eddie. “She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza” (Oates). While her mother continues to have an impression of her daughter as a child, the outsider’s impression of her is of a girl actively engaged in a con. As the story is revealed, though, the reader is forced to realize how truly innocent Connie really is, exposing within the reader the same tendency to judge another based on expectations formed by one’s impressions. Although the reader has come to view Connie as a ‘bad girl,’ they are forced by the end of the story to admit that Connie really had no idea how to handle the situation at her house and was therefore much more innocent than presumed. The deception of impression is also explored through the character of Arnold Friend, a character involving another trope in the name through the deliberate contradiction in terms. Connie’s first impression of Arnold is that he is a somewhat strange boy with sloppy hair and a strange colored car who behaves in a disturbing way. While she makes a goofy face at him to let him know she’s not interested in him, she still recognizes Arnold as just another boy that she can easily manipulate the way she has manipulated a number of other boys before. She retains this impression as they begin to talk at her house, but the more they talk, the stranger he seems. Although he makes all the correct moves, wears the correct clothes and listens to the correct radio station to pass himself off as a teenager just slightly older than herself, Connie begins to realize even from across the driveway that Arnold Friend is not what he appears to be. “She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older – thirty, maybe more” (Oates). Friend tries to assure her that he’s only 18, but Connie notices lines around his mouth when he smiles and a strange look to his eyes that indicate something is wrong. As she learns more about him, Connie realizes that first impressions can be as misleading as a name. “His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered make-up on his face but had forgotten about his throat” (Oates). Although most people’s impressions of Arnold Friend paint him as a teenager because that’s what they expect to see, getting to know him a little better and taking a closer look reveals a grown man with very evil intentions. Both of these stories focus on the evil elements we all hide within ourselves. Connie is able to retain her innocent identity at home because of previous expectations and Connie’s deliberate attempts to conceal her true nature. At the same time, though, she deliberately becomes someone else when her parents aren’t around, giving meaning to her name ‘Con’nie. Although Friend is able to create an impression of a much younger individual, he is not able to disguise his intentions from Connie or the reader as he coerces the girl from her home. As there seems to be no means by which one might shut off the automatic internal mechanism to understand reality as presented, one must instead learn how to recognize when judgments might be based on erroneous assumptions. Works Cited Brockenbrough, Martha. “First Impressions: How Much do They Really Matter?” Encarta. (2008). March 22, 2010 Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, Where have you been?” The Ontario Review. 1991. Sterling, Michelle T. “First Impressions.” About Entrepreneurs. (2002). March 22, 2010 Read More