Jeez. I was
not expecting the final short story to be a long one. I scrolled down to survey
how extensive it actually was after seeing the miniscule scroll bar to the
right of my interwebz window. However I decided I would turn off my dubstep
music and buckle down to read the whole story.
The first
part, all of the descriptiveness, was rather dry in my opinion. After the
action got underway, I couldn’t get images of characters from Grease and The
Outsiders out of my head. I pictured
Arnold Friend as one of the guys from the bad gang in Grease, the ones that get
in the car crash in the end. I didn’t
realize the story was going to end up being so dark, and it was kind of
shocking once Arnold became serious. It started out innocently enough, just a
story about a girl slightly rebellious teen girl going around town with her friends.
However the ending and events that transpired with Arnold and Ellie were a
pretty dark contrast from the beginning. I read up on the background story and
it turns out Joyce Carol Oates was inspired to write it by a series of articles
in Life magazine about serial killers
in Tucson, Arizona. I read this, and it totally solidified an ending to the
story for me.
One of the
most unique things in the short story was Arnold Friend’s gold convertible. It
sounds like such an interesting car to see, especially with all of the paint,
decals, and curious writing all over it. This, coupled with what I imagined to
be a sort of sad-eyed side kick, boombox held on his shoulder, sitting in the
back seat completely dejected, created a very picturesque idea in my head.
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