Arnold “Psycho” Friend
...isguising himself as a teenager, Arnold Friend is able to find out personal information about his victims by asking their close friends. Before he even meets Connie he already knows everything about her. This obviously surprises and even frightens Connie so in return she asks “How’d you find out all that stuff” (61)? Arnold Friend replies by simply reciting “Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger [… and] Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter—“ (62). By pretending to be a teenager, Arnold Friend becomes an acquaintance with everyone who 2 knows Connie and successfully finds out everything about her. He does this by “wearing a wig” (94) and even by wearing make-up and mascara to appear younger. Arnold Friend is not who he really says he is. He is the type of person who would lie, cheat, steal, and even disguise himself to get what he is after. Unlike the super-natural, Arnold Friend can not visualize what is happening all the way across town. As aforementioned, he simply pretends to know things by guessing and lying. The reader sees this when Arnold Friend blatantly lies about the whereabouts of Connie’s family: “Aunt Tillie’s. Right now they’re—uh—they’re drinking. Sitting around,” he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie’s backyard [emphasis mine]. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. “Yeah. Sitting around. There’s your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you sweetheart! And your mother’s helping some fat woman with the corn, they’re cleaning the corn—husking the corn—” (98). The style Joyce Carol Oates chooses for Arnold Friend during this particular excerpt reveals what is actually going through Arnold Friend’s mind. The numerous amounts of hyphens demonstrate a pause in Arnold Friend’s speech. He is hesitant and unsure of what he is saying. He is making everything up and is not really able to look all the way across town. Arnold Friend only wants to seem like a super-natural being so that Connie will associate him with all that is good and eventually begin to trust him. 3 The only power that Arnold Friend has over Connie is the ability to scare her. When Arnold Friend frightens Connie, it becomes painfully obvious that she does not respond well to trepidation. Arnold Friend makes her “so sick with fear that she could do nothing […]” (144). Arnold Friend eventually uncovers Connie’s weakness and threatens her by warning “Soon as you touch the phone I don’t need to keep my promise and can come inside. You won’t ...