Arnold Friend vs. Charles Schmid.Doc

Arnold Friend and Charles Schmid: Monsters or Heroes?

The thematic literature anthology, Retellings, features Part 8 “Monsters and Heroes” as a unique way to enter the realm of the human psyche and subconscious and as an attempt to understand our simultaneous repulsion and attraction to the modern monster. More specifically, this section uses the infamous villains Arnold Friend and Charles Schmid from Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Don Moser’s article “The Pied Piper of Tucson,” respectively, in order to portray the idea of a monster. Loosely based on the real-life events detailed in Moser’s article, Oates’ story is one of fiction. Therefore, through the introduction to this “Monsters and Heroes” section of the anthology, the nonfiction article containing portions of the testimonies given in court, and a fictional account of this event, we see expansions made upon conventional views of monsters: “Despite our tendency to project the monster into the world beyond us, the monster also resides inside. We fear it and yet, ironically are attracted to it” (Clarke & Clarke 185). From this quotation, it is evident that the monster-hero dichotomy is no longer black and white; instead, we see that all monsters possess humanizing characteristics; and, likewise, every person has, even if they are buried deep within the unconscious, monster-like qualities that can put any hero into question.

Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” depicts the sensual, mysterious Arnold Friend as the modern monster who seeks to lure the protagonist Connie both physically and symbolically out of her childhood home and violently thrust her into adulthood. Oates writes, “[she] recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks...one fist against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did not come together” (Oates 192). As the author...