I found the ending hard to believe. A teenager who is scared to death by this man she does not know, just follows him, to prevent him carrying out a threat against her family. That is the only reason I can see why she walks out of the house when she could just have called the police. This is why I think the whole episode with Arnold Friend was nothing more than a bad dream.
Arnold Friend is an ambiguous character that could be interpreted as a lunatic serial killer, a demon, or a daydream. Friend has problems walking in his boots in the story. The real life serial killer Charles Schmid, who inspired the story, put crushed tin cans and newspaper in his boots to appear taller. This could be the reason friend has problems with his footwear.
…show more content…
The way she acts at home around her family and the way she acts when she goes into town. She is a teenager moving from the role of child to adult and does not understand the reality of that adult world. She likes it when boys look at her but she does not understand that sometimes you can get unwanted attention that can’t be easily dismissed. Friend causes the two sides of Connie’s personality to merge in a terrible way when she picks up the phone and cries out for her mother like a child would. She does not call the police which would be the smart thing to do but instead walks outside with Friend. Connie is afraid that Friend will come back and kill her and the rest of her family if she does not go with him. She does not call for help but instead goes with Friend to save the rest of her family. This act is the merging of a child’s personality that revolves around selfish concerns with an adult’s responsibility to think about other people and make sacrifices for them. I just can’t believe that Connie would make the sacrifice based on how selfish she is all the way up to this point. I believe Friend is actually just a bad dream based on a guy she saw in a gold car the night before. A bad dream warning her that the adult world is not the same as her romantic