The Character of Arnold Friend - Essay Example

For this purpose, a mention would be made of both direct quotations from the story and also views of a renowned scholar and which add strength to the argument presented by this essay. Here, it needs to be specified that the scope of this essay is confined to solely understanding the character of Arnold Friend, and not to give a detailed summary of the story. Background It was sometime in the second half of 1960s that the author happened to read about Charles Schmid, a serial killer of Arizona who murdered several girls.

All these girls were in their teens. In fact, the killer was named as “The Pied Piper of Tucson”, and Joyce did not take too much of time in deciding to write a story based on the serial killings, and the title of this story is “Where are you going, Where have you been?”As a matter of fact, the character of Arnold Friend in this story clearly resembles Schmid. Just like the latter, even Arnold Friend is short and attempts to look taller by stuffing some things in his shoes. Most importantly, in the story, even Arnold goes on to intimidate a teenage girl who was trying to keep him at bay.

But here, the author brought an entirely new dimension by adding an element of supernatural phenomenon to the story, and this is what is going to elaborately analyzed in the subsequent section. (1) Analysis The aforementioned supernatural phenomenon is obvious from the narrative of story strongly suggesting that Arnold Friend is Satan himself, in disguise. There are several quotations from the story, which add weight to this argument, and it would be very much apt in having a look at some of those.

When Arnold sees Connie for the first time he remarks “Gonna get you, baby”. That is definitely not a respectable way of addressing ladies, and in fact, this also subtly hints that there is an element of evil in Arnold. (2) When Connie gets worried that her family members would return home, the following is the exact situation. “Arnold says “Aunt Tillie’s. Right now they’re uh—they’re drinking. Sitting around,” he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie’s back yard.

Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. “Yeah. Sitting around. There’s your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother’s helping some fat woman with the corn, they’re cleaning the corn—husking the corn.” (2) From the contents stated in the preceding paragraph, it is evident that Arnold Friend possesses paranormal powers. He was vividly able to see the things taking place at a distant location.

In popular literature, Satan is described as a combination of these powers and evil intentions, not to mention the ability to effectively assume any form. When Connie was worriedly resisting the advances of Arnold and was trying to make sure that the door gets locked, he remarks “But why lock it? It’s just a screen door? It’s just nothing.” These words subtly focus on another power of Satan where, locked doors and windows cannot prevent him from gaining entry into a place. Although he explains by stating that breaking a screen door is not an issue for anyone, yet, in light of the contents discussed up to that point in the story, it is but obvious that the power of the evil entity is being referred to. (2) When Connie was still adamant in not yielding to Arnold’s charm, he starts threatening her by saying “You don’t want your people in any trouble, do you?

” That again is a clear reflection of his grossly evil nature- a nature which is characteristic of Satan! The manner in which the story reaches its end subtly points out that he kills