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Temptation In Annie Oates Great Expectations

507 Words3 Pages

A strange and stalker wanders up to a fifteen year old girls house, trying to convince her to come along for a ride. The girl does not want to go, and knows it can only end in doom.

Temptation is a part of the evil. “‘Now, these numbers are a secret code, honey,’ Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn't think much of it.” Many people believe this story relates to religious beliefs. Religious people are very certain that one of the main characters, is portrayed as the devil, although Oates does not elaborate on this. The numbers used can be a secret code. If you look in the bible the thirty third book of the old testament is Judges, chapter …show more content…

Oates illustrates the female main character as attention seeking. The main character does not act her age, she tries to be mature. When the fiend comes around she realizes she is not as mature as she believed. When she figures out no one is going to be able to save her, she realizes how much of a child she actually is. Oates shows how Connie has two sides of herself. When she is around her friends, her appearance and attitude is different than when she is home with her family. She attracts the wrong men with her attitude. She is fearful to actually become an adult. Arnold may be a strange man or he may be a nightmare that she has day dreamed. The main character’s life mainly revolves around men.
Death of herself or death of her emotions. Even if the main character gets past this and is not murdered, she will be emotionally scarred. Oates advances to a point in the story, where Arnold knows so much about her family she will never feel safe. He knows random details about their lives. Arnold is Connie’s future whether she likes it or not. Oates does not give any escape route for the main characters. We know from early own there will be a bad ending. Believing she must go with the bad guy to protect her family, because Oates composes her into being a decent person who realizes she treated her family

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A lot of clues in the story hinted that Arnold Friend wasn’t a friend at all, but was a demon that came to take Connie away. When Arnold Friend was first introduced, Connie kept an uneasy feeling about him and felt intrigued by his presence. For example, Arnold immediately starts to ask Connie if she wants to come for a ride. (Oates 1012). Arnold seems to add pressure to Connie from the start and is obviously not there just to take her for a ride.

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Connie had a side hidden away from her family. When home she had a “childlike and bobbing walk”( Oates 1) but away from home her walk was “languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head”. The moral standards and self interpretation of Oates character Connie stems from how her parents treat

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The short story doesn’t give us much background on the characters; so their names tell the rest of their story. First off, Connie, the main character, has a very subtle, and somewhat controversial, hidden meaning. From my perspective, Oates named her Connie due to the fact that she always conjures up something. When she’s at home, she often conjures up conflict concerning her mom and sister. She does not do her chores, unlike her perfect sister, who always does her’s; she gawks at herself in the mirror, much to her mother’s disapproval; and she is filled with “trashy daydreams” that have done wonders to corrupt her mind.

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