Sexual Predators
... are not things you know about people before you ever meet them. Arnold must want to rape and then kill Connie because he went through all this trouble to find out information about her. Arnold would have never gone through this trouble if he just wanted to be friends with her. When Connie is looking at Arnold’s car she sees the numbers 33, 19, 17 but doesn’t know what they mean. Coulthard believes that “the numbers most likely are the ages of Arnold Friends previous victims” (506). Charles Schmid murdered three girls whose ages were 19, 17, and 15. These ages are significant because his next victim is always 2 years younger than the one before that. The numbers on Arnold Friend’s car the ages of the girls he killed before Connie. The 33 year old girl might have been an accident but the other two follow Charles Schmid’s pattern. Connie is 15 which fit’s this pattern perfect. The appearance of Charles Schmid was much like Arnolds. Coulthard describes Schmid as “he was short and muscular, and he tried to appear younger and to disguise his lack of height by dying his hair black, wearing pancake makeup, and stuffing rags and even crumpled cans into his black leather boots” (506). Arnold Friend is described by Connie as having long black hair that almost looks like a wig, pretty short and looks a lot older than her even though he said he was 18. These are some of the same characteristics that Charles Schmid has. In the story Connie says “He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller” (Oates 36) describing Arnold Friend. This most likely means that Arnold stuffed something in his boots make him look bigger. Just like Arnold, Charles stuffed rags or crumpled cans into his shoes. In the story it says that Arnold has a gold car. Tom Quirk informs us that “Friend also drives a gold car, apparently older than the gold car Schmid owned, but newly painted” (415). This shows another relation between the story and Charles Schmid. Schmid was not by himself, as stated in Coulthard’s criticism “Schmid and his friend John Sanders raped and murdered Alleen Rowe” (506). This leads me to believe that Ellie, Arnold Friend’s who was in the car when they were at Connie’s was planning on taking part of raping and killing Connie. Ellie may not have been the one talking to Connie but he knew what Arnold was planning on doing and knew he wanted to have part in this. In this story Oates is trying to make it aware that people like Arnold are always around and we need to teach kids to try to stay away from these kinds of people. When Arnold goes to Connie’s house he is very nice to her. He says things like “You want to come for a ride?” (Oates 32) or “You’re cute” (32). Arnold wants to act like he is her friend and tries to get her to leave with him. Arnold also shows her his car to try to get her interested in him. Arnold plays music that Connie listens to so he can make her feel more relaxed. He also tries to comfort her and pretend he’s meant for her by saying “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me” (37). All of these things Arnold does are ways he can ...