What hints does Oates give us that Arnold Friend is not what he seems?Do you find him funny—or frightening? Why?
What will be an ideal response?
- Much about him seems fakery: his masklike face and “stage voice,” his gilded jalopy, his artificially padded boots, his affecting the speech, dress, and music of the youth culture (although he is over thirty). Looked at this way, he seems a silly, pathetic goof. But this is only one aspect of his character and his function in the story. What, for instance, are we to make of his strangely detailed knowledge of Connie and her family, of his apparent ability to see what is happening at the barbecue, miles away? Is he a supernatural character? Perhaps Arnold’s knowledge was obtained merely by pumping Connie’s friends for information and by keeping close watch on her house, and perhaps his reported vision of the barbecue is merely feigned for Connie’s benefit. Still, there are hints that he is a devil or a warlock. Perhaps Ellie Oscar, the “forty-year-old baby,” is his imp or familiar; perhaps his bendable boot conceals a cloven hoof. He works a kind of magic: on first spying Connie he draws a sign in the air that marks her for his own. He threatens to possess her very soul: he will enter her “where it’s all secret” and then, after the sex act, she will give in to him (par. 104). A charismatic person like Charles Manson, he seeks young girls to dominate. Oates herself has remarked: “The story itself is a Hawthornian parable of a kind, ‘realistic’ in its surface texture but otherwise allegorical” (interview with Barbara C. Millard, Four Quartets, Fall 1988). Is it, then, an account of a confrontation with the Devil, comparable with “Young Goodman Brown”?
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Answer the following statement(s) true (T) or false (F)
1. People in Rose’s family and neighborhood were glad to have work, no matter how hard it was. 2. Even though he worked in a trade rather than in a profession, Gaul had a college degree. 3. His father woke him and his brothers each morning at 5:30 a.m. 4. The chore the author describes at length in this essay is milking the cows. 5. The author decides that, in spite of the hard work, he wants to be a farmer like his father.
Which of the following best describes the "broken windows" theory?
a. children got lead poisoning from lead paint on old windows and doors b. dolling out harsh consequences for minor offenses prevents more serious crimes c. the legalization of abortion contributed to the decline of violent crime d. violent offenders are like broken windows in that once they commit violent crimes, they cannot be fixed and are too unsafe to be allowed in society
Combine the sentence pairs using the three options: 1. a comma and a coordinating conjunction 2. a semicolon 3. a semicolon and a conjunctive adverb (with a comma if needed)
Chase and his friends studied every day during the three-day weekend. They got good grades on the exam.
In Alvord's essay, she begins with a literal description of healing, then moves to examples of the power of singing in different cultures. Overall, Alvarez's organization is
a) chronological. b) spatial. c) a mix between spatial and chronological. d) from one extreme to another.