Arnold Friend Character Analysis

Wickedness and malevolence is afoot in the stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor. The antagonists are both men, Arnold Friend and Manley Pointer, who take advantage of women. However, one of these men is more malicious than the other. This man is Arnold Friend from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” because his intentions with the young woman, who is a minor, appear to be much more evil and daunting than that of Manley Pointer from “Good Country People”. This can be inferred from the open ending in Oates’s story, where the reader can only presume the worst will happen to 15 year old Connie after being manipulated and taken over by Arnold Friend. Manley

“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”. In addition to this label, Linda Wagner-Martin in her article Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?: Overview believes society’s expectations is also to blame for Connie’s fate. “ Connie's Achilles' heel, her weakness in social interaction, is her naiveté. “She believes everything her culture has taught her about herself as a young woman, herself as a sexual object, and herself as a person questing for adventure. She defines "adventure" only in sexual terms.” (Wagner-Martin). Friend’s sickening manipulation of a naïve 15 year old, as well as taking advantage of how easy that was during that time, only further explains why Friend is more of a villainous antagonist than Pointer, who manipulated an older woman in her