This story by Joyce Carol Oates is one of the creepiest stories I have ever read. The general idea of this short story is that the main character Connie is contemplating making the jump from pure to impure. By pure I mean being a virgin and unpure would be losing her virginity.
Connie is described as a 15 year old female. She is very pretty and knows it. "She knew she was pretty and that was everything." Like most girls her age she likes to hang out with her friends and mingle with the opposite sex. Up until this point Connie has been a good girl and has not went "all the way." Connie has two sides to her, her "home" side and her "away" side. She acts different at home than she does with her friends. She tries to act more respectable at home around her mother because she is constantly on Connie about something. Away from her house Connie kind of let's loose, but not in necessarily a bad way.
The basic story line is that she tells her parents that she is going to the movies with a friend. Instead of attending the movie they go across the street to a restaurant where all the older kids hang out. She meets a guy and they leave to go somewhere else. While crossing the street she sees another guy in a gold car who signals to her. She pays him no attention, but looks back a few seconds later and he is still staring at her and says "Gonna get you, baby." Then there is a jump in the story. Connie has decided not to go to a bar-b-que with her family and instead decides to stay home, wash her hair, and get some sun. Then the story really unfolds. The first time I read the story I thought that it was real and it was super creepy to the point it was almost unbelievable. Then I went back through the story and found an important part I skipped over. The important sentences I forgot are "The asbestos "ranch house" that was now three years old startled her---it looked small. She shook her head as if to get awake." These sentences explain to the audience that what is coming next is a dream. Once I figured that out I could understand the rest of the story a little better.
The rest of the story deals with the guy in the gold car coming to Connie's house. He tries to persuade her into taking a "ride" with him. He basically just wants to have sex with her. They have an extremely long dialogue. The whole time Connie stands behind a screen door. Eventually Connie notices the guy seems to to wearing a wig, has make up on, and has stuffed his boots to make him look taller. She also sees that he is much older than her, possibly 30, despite the fact that he tells her that he is only 18.
Another reason the audience can tell that the story is not reality is because the house only has a screen door. Almost every house has at least a wooden door for protection in today's world. Despite the fact that it is just a screen door, Connie seems to take refuge behind it. It's as if she thinks it will hold this man back, that he won't be able to break it down. It could also signify the line between being a virgin and not. This is true because when she is inside the house she is in her parents world. A world where Connie acts more reserved and she wouldn't think about having sex. Once she leaves the house through the screen door at the end of the story she has made the decision to have sex. After she has stepped outside the house she sees "land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it." I take this to mean that Connie's world changes after she has sex. She sees everything in a different light. It is an important action in her life just like it is for everyone else in the world. People always seem to act at least a little differently after they have sex the first time.
Arnold could represent a bad date or maybe a date that she might go on in the future if she keeps up her behavior of sneaking off to be with guys. She might eventually be forced to make the same decision. This dream could also all be made up from things Connie has previously thought about. She could be acting out this scenario in her dream using people and ideas she had already thought about before.
There are a couple of more reasons that point to the story being a dream. The first is because Connie doesn't recognize her own her. Another reason is that Arnold seems to know way too much about Connie. Even for a stalker the amount of information he knows is a little hard to believe. He knows what her family is wearing and even what they are doing at that moment in time at the bar-b-que. It is also strange that when he makes an "x" in the air it stays in the air "almost visible."
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