My Thoughts on Where are you going

Connie posses the main character title because of the role she plays in the story. She is in every scene and a majority of the other characters actually make an appearance just to associate with her. Also, all the other characters lines play off the actions that she makes. Arnold Friend just plays the so called villain of the story. On top of that the only people that even make contact with him are Connie and Ellie.

I actually like his name. It does not match his real personality but it still seems like a good fit. It sort of seems like an oxymoron to me because of the fact that his name is A. Friend but he has no kind of friend traits. Plus, his car, his clothes, and his language plays in with the name a little with regards on Connie because she is use to hanging with people that dress and talk like him. I think that with him presenting himself to her in a way that she is comfortable with, it drew her in a little.

Since I have a problem with child rapists, this is what I like to think happened: Arnold drove her over to the next county so nobody would know who they were and drove into the field. There they laid in the field where he presented himself to her and when she saw it she started laughing. A. Friend did not like that and attempted to choke her and before he could a sheriff pulled into the field and told them to leave. That’s why she was laughing when her sister came home because she was thinking about his small reproductive organ.

The setting I think played a role a big role in the story because it is a town that is really spread out so there is a lot of private areas where people can go and not be seen. In the movie, there were a couple of scenes where there was nobody around so there were many possibilities for something bad to happen. This left for a lot of added suspense to the story. Like when they were in the vacant garage, or when she was walking home in the middle of the night by herself.

A. Friend Indeed

Alot of stories come from a true life experience, whether it involved the writer or not. Sometimes it is portrayed in a different context or the story is changed a little such as new character names or settings. But even with all of that you can still see the similarities in the new story.
Like in this true life event where a man named Charles Schimd killed 3 teenage girls in Tuscon, Arizona and buried them in the desert. Charles Schimd was older then these girls but that did not stop him from luring them in. Now in the story "Where are going, Where have you been?" and the movie "Smooth Talk", there are 3 girls, Connie, Laura, and Jill. In the story, these girls are infatuated with meeting and trying to hook up with guys, and the succeeded to do that to a certain extent. Until one day, Connie is at home by herself when this guy named Arnold Friend drives into her driveway with his friend Ellie. It was easy to see that Arnold friend was a depiction of Charles Schimd because he was an older guy and you could tell that just by looking at him. Also, the girls represented the teenage girls in a way. In the story and the movie they none of them were killed but in the movie Laura ends up getting pregnant and Arnold Friend ends up raping Connie.
The way i see how these stories are played out is, in the true life event and in the stories you have young girls that have to have this urge to have older companionship. These urges end up being very bad choices in the end. So I believe that the message of the story Joyce Oates made is be careful in the choices that you make because you never know what my happen in the end.

All stories have a unique or hidden way of displaying a message in a reader’s mind, and not every message is the same. However, if you look hard enough at any story, anyone can find a common theme between any stories. In “A&P”, “Rites of Passage”, and “The only girl at the boy’s party” we discussed the themes “Hero” and “Sheep” and broke them down a bit. But as I thought about these stories I found my own sort of them that I could place as a common theme between these stories. The theme that I came up with is…. “Growing Up”. I chose growing up because in each story, I realized that the characters were getting older or being pictured as getting old in some sense or another.
In “A&P”, Sammy, the main character is a cashier and while at work one day he sees three girls in bathing suits walking around in the store. Later in the story, his manager tells the girls to leave because he does not like the way they are dressed while they’re walking in his store and he does not think it is appropriate. After Sammy see’s this, he decides to impress the girls by quitting his job but they do not see him do it and his plan backfires. So after reading this, why do I think that this story has something to do with growing up? Well while he is outside he realizes and says to himself “…and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” This is the feeling everyone gets when the realize that they are in a whole new chapter of their life, and that is time to put down all their childish things are really start trying to work towards something. That’s when you realize that you have to start being more of any adult, like when you first enter into college by yourself. I guess you can call it ‘that grown up feeling’.
“The only girl at the boy’s party” is about a girl at an all boys’ party but when you’re reading it you can’t tell how old she is. When you first start reading it, the girl seems to be young like around 3 or 4 maybe except as the story goes on you realize that the narrator or the girl’s mom or dad starts to describe the girls’ experience in a more PG-13 sort of way. This is likewise in "Rites of Passage" where the story starts off about a little boy at a party but evolves into a story more about a group of young men or soldiers and the narrator keeps depicting.

Updike (hahahahahahahahaha) Interview

After seeing the interview with John Updike, my view about the story has not changed much. But, It is good to hear where the ideas for all the characters, the setting, and the plot came from. Like how he got the idea of the for the stores name came from the name of a store in his town called A&P. Also, how the idea for Queenie came from seeing a girl in the A&P store wearing a bathing suit. Another thing that impressed me was that he said the thoughts of Sammy were his thoughts if he were to be in the same setting as Sammy. So after I heard that, I understood why all of the cashiers thought were in such great detail. Updike also brought up how Sammy was trying to impress the girls; he said that Sammy was more trying to impress just Queenie rather then trying to impress all of the girls. And he told about how the manager's name came from the name of his mother's old boss. He said when he was thinking up names for the character all he could remember was his mother coming in and talking non-stop about her day and work and how she kept saying her boss's name over and over.
But the thing that caught me is how he said that the story really did not end with him just thinking outside the story. But really ending with him going to go look for the girls at the beach, but he never does find them. This stood out to me the most because I use to be kind of upset because he quit his job and did not even get to see the girls afterwards which made me think that he pretty much did just quit his job for no reason. But after hearing that ending I could breath a sigh of relief knowing that he did try to make an attempt to go find them.

HERO

I looked up a lot of definitions for the word hero and in a biblical sense a majority of them all pretty much said the same thing. For instance; A person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal. I believe and understand what this definition is saying but I think there is more to it. My definition for the word hero is; Someone that shows great courage when faced with adversity, whether physical or mental. The first definition deals more with people that has probably saved a life or made a great change to the way people live there life. People like, Hercules, Barack Obama, Superman, or Martin Luther King Jr., that have had a lot of attention for the work that they have done. I do believe that all these people are heroes but I feel like other people should be put into the hero category along with these other heroes. The people that I am talking about are people like the little kids at St. Jude's that fight for there lives everyday, these kids are heroes to me. With me working a little bit with Up til' Dawn last year and me being a Moral Captain this year, I've seen a some of this first hand. These kids go through tons of surgeries and other things like that all the time and when they are finished you see them smiling and playing like there is nothing wrong with them. There are adults that could not handle half of the stuff some of these kids go through on a daily bases and because of the courage that they show, they are all heroes to me. They are the people that fit my definition of the word hero.

So in the John Updike story "A&P", the bag boy/ cashier, Sammy, quits his job because he sees his manager, who happens to be a male chauvinistic pig, make "Queenie" and her clique leave the store because of the way they are dressed after leaving the beach. He makes an argument that the manager embarrassed them and that was not the right thing to do. Does this make him a hero? Well, if he did it for the right reasons then yes maybe he would be considered as a hero but he did it just to impress those girls so that makes it kind of a selfish act more then a heroic one. Also, he felt bad after he did it and regretted his decision to quit his job since the outcome that he wanted did not happen. After a real heroic effort your to feel like you accomplished something whether the outcome wasn't what you wanted, and you are not going to regret doing a good thing for somebody else's cause. So Sam really is not a hero if you compare him with the the heroes and the definitions in the first paragraph.

Chapter 1 Questions

Pg. 6

1. The North Wind is very aggressive and sort of a showboat, While the Sun is Very Patient and thinks about his strategy.

2. The North Wind's idea did not work, It just made the person hold to there coat tighter.

3. The Sun just waited and waited until the travler got hot and removed his coat.

4. The Travler was the genei pig for their contest.

5. The moral of the story is that is easier to persuae someone rather then to force them to do something.

Pg. 8

1. The exposition of the story is where Chuang Tzu was fishing and was approached by the officials. He only uses one sentence to set up the situation.

2. He mentions the tortoise to show that he did not want to be put in a place where he does not want to be like the tortoise is. He does not answer because he most have put alot of thought into the situation already. He makes them anwser just to show how obvious it was that he did not want to go.

3. It shows that he is very smart and also that he likes to be independent.

Pg. 19

1. Some details are true to life like; Like the over reacting manager, and the head girl in the clique, and the very extreme details make easier to picture everything.

2. We get to know alot about Sammy because the story is in his point of view, so we can see everything that he's thinging.

3. The exposition happens in the first few paragraphs while there explaining the character and the setting.

4. No, Sammy's feelings do not change.

5. The dramatic conflict starts when the manager confronts the girls on there clothing and continues until the end of the story.

6. He quits because he thinks the girls will notice and he'll get some nookie later on in the sequel.

7. I think the whole story shows it because you knew sooner or later he was going to try to say something to them or gain there attention somehow.

8. He regrets his decision that he quit his job.

9. That the supermarket life sucks, and that people that work there aren't really going anywhere in life.