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Joyce Carol Oates Smooth Talk

616 Words3 Pages

In the story, Joyce Carol Oates introduces the main character, Connie, by giving the reader contextual information on her life. Connie was the typical rebel teenager. She lied to her parents, snuck off with the boys, went out late at night, was mischievous, and had a dysfunctional relationship with her family. The story motivated the production of the film, “Smooth Talk”. Both of these pieces had the same crucial ideas, varied in the family relations, information concerning Arnold Friend and his obsession of Connie, and resolutions to the ambiguous ending.
A major difference between the two versions of this plot rested on Connie’s bond with her family. In the short story, Oates briefly discussed Connie’s manners and connection with her family. …show more content…

The movie emphases the greater part of its time on Connie, her friends, her passionate experiences, and her family. Despite the quite different emphases in the movie and short story, the characters of Connie and Arnold Friend remained the same. The story pondered Connie’s classic juvenile troubles, which was an attitude that continued on to the film. However, the film used scenes (as with Connie and friends at the mall) and developed them in order to enhance the characters. This made particular parts more vital to the plot advancement. Arnold Friend’s personality stayed unaffected during the course of the film. He is revealed as a frightening, unnerving character that lies about his age in order to charm younger girls. Oates does not express how Arnold learns so much about Connie, her family, and her daily routines; forming an ominous atmosphere in the text because the reader is left envisioning whether Arnold Friend is a physical character or if he is a paranormal entity (conceivably Satan). In the movie, the onlookers learn that Arnold Friend lingers nearby Connie’s community and contacts Connie’s friends to manipulate information out of them. Naïvely, her friends share private information with Arnold aiding him on a trajectory to his next adolescent prey. In both the motion picture and short story, Arnold Friend’s stipulation

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