In these Bright Lights, can you feel our pain??

     You hear your name called, but you can’t bring yourself to step forward to the microphone. You’ve made it to the top three, but you have trouble understanding why you deserve to be there. Competing has never really been your “thing”; the idea of sacrificing someone else’s happiness for your own personal success is discomforting. But spelling means everything to you. You can’t imagine a time in your life that your mind, thoughts, and actions weren’t encompassed with words and language.

     You realize you’ve been stalling, and it’s your turn to spell. You step up and listen for the word. Axiom. You know the definition (a universally accepted rule or principle) but you ask for it anyways. Spellers almost always ask for the definition; it gives them a chance to think. You think to yourself how this itself is an axiom, and find that correlation amusing. Axiom. A-X-I-U-M. You know that doesn’t sound right. You take a prolonged breath, in, then out, and spell. A-X-I-O-M. Axiom. Through the fuzzy sound system of the auditorium, you hear the words “that is correct” and know you’re safe to sit back down.

     You return to your seat and realize you have time to think. You think about the competition, but it makes your palms sweat, which makes your heart race, so you begin to think about the nerves of the kids around you. The rest of the spellers choked. You and the two kids next to you are the best of the best. This concept is difficult to grasp. You contemplate why you deserve to be in the top three, ahead of them. You envision winning the whole bee, which makes you wonder why the two kids next to you shouldn’t win. The idea that they’ve worked as hard as you have and care just as much as you do makes you nervous. This thought just strengthens your dislike of competition, but you know you’re in too deep to turn back now. You think about how you’re the youngest one there. It’s your turn to spell again.

Materialism and Silly Parents in Persuasion

      It is no surprise that Jane Austen is known for her use of satire and ridicule to poke fun at the system of economics and social hierarchies throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Austen’s novel, Persuasion, is a prime example of this use of satire, as she utilizes characters such as Sir Walter Elliot and his three daughters to represent everything she sees wrong with the elite class.

       A common theme in many of Austen’s books, like Persuasion, is her portrayal of many upper class families during this time as materialistic and self-absorbed in nature. I feel the Elliot family best represents this materialism, especially the father of the Elliots, as “Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation” (Austen 4). Sir Walter is known for his extravagant spending, to the point that Lady Russell and Sir Walter’s lawyer felt it would be in his best interest to rent out his estate and move to Bath in order to regain the money he wasted during his frivolous spending. Elizabeth, the eldest of the Elliot girls, takes after her father in this materialism, as she tends to spend more time focusing on her good looks rather than an appealing personality. This materialism is most likely why “She had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger,” (Austen 8) and also why, although she is the eldest daughter, Elizabeth is still not married. Austen is using these characters to almost make a parody of the families she most likely saw and heard about in her own life, exaggerating their most negative attributes, and using those traits as satirical devices in her books.

      Another satirical element in Austen’s Persuasion is the portrayal of “silly parents” such as Sir Walter and Mary Elliot Musgrove. Sir Walter raised Mary and her sisters practically alone, and because of this fact, and his tendency to think only of himself, Sir Walter tended to spoil his children and have very little involvement in their lives. As this type of parenting was all Mary knew, she went on to be a poor parent herself, and the readers watch as Anne almost takes Mary’s place as a mother figure for her children. Trying to set an example for Mary and show her what it truly means to be a parent, Anne says, “‘. . . indeed, Mary, I cannot wonder at your husband. Nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his province. A sick child is always the mother’s property: her own feelings generally make it so” (Austen 67). However, despite Anne’s attempts, Mary has little desire to be involved in her children’s lives, as she herself is merely a child, being the youngest Elliot. Austen addresses this satirical element in a similar manner as stated before, portraying Mary in a way that makes it almost seem that she hates her children. Although this trait is of course exaggerated for an effect, Austen is attempting to make it clear that members of the elite class during this time period often tended to neglect their children for the sake of their own needs, thus raising children who will be as neglectful towards their own children, and the pattern will continue indefinitely.

      I believe that Austen’s intentions behind approaching the elite class members of society in a satirical way was to prevent not only this pattern, but many other endless cycles of poor behavior and faulted priorities being passed down from generation to generation.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York City: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.

Do we live in a world of Connies?

          A common theme throughout Joyce Carol Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been is that things are not always as they appear to be on the surface. Joyce M. Wegs discusses this phenomenon, explaining how, within Oates’s use of a stereotypical, suburban town, “a familiar world suddenly appears alien” (Wegs 99). Connie comes from what would appear to be a nice, typical family. She lives in a town that, on the surface, is one just like any other in suburban America. However, the readers quickly learn that Connie’s life instead represents all that is gawky, shallow, and, arguably sinful, in our world. This grotesque depiction of the stereotypical, middle class, American lifestyle during this time gives Oates’s story its rightful classification as a horror-mystery.
          Connie’s character is a prime example of having multiple personas, as, “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 1). Connie’s main focus throughout the story is her appearance, making her a symbol for the all too common shallow teenager in our society. In fact, “much of the terror of the story comes from the recognition that there must be thousands of Connies” (Wegs 100). However, Connie, like much of the youth in America, comes from a family that does not necessarily approve of her rebellious and shallow lifestyle, so she puts on a separate persona in order to disguise her “true self” from her family. Oates plays this separate persona so strongly that, in fact, the reader begins to forget that Connie is merely fifteen, until her innocence is made apparent again in her most desperate time, as she’s meeting Arnold Friend.
          Arnold Friend is the most obvious example of having deceiving personas in this story. He appears to be a familiar face, so much that Connie “recognized all things about him” (Oates 5). However, the more the readers and Connie are both exposed to Friend, it is made clear that he is not familiar, but instead deceiving Connie in order to appeal to his grotesque needs. Oates seems to purposely make him a confusing and strangely intriguing character, as “she makes no… effort to explain the existence of Arnold” (Wegs 104). This character choice ensures that the readers are left as confused and helpless as Connie, waiting to see what Arnold Friend might say or do next. Because of this, the readers are equally surprised, and slightly horrified, when Connie realizes that Arnold “wasn’t a kid, he was much older” (Oates 5). Something about Friend no longer being someone familiar and relatable to Connie makes his character much more threatening. In that sense, his name itself is deceiving, as the readers begin to realize Arnold is anything but a friend to Connie.
          It’s arguable that Connie’s parents too put on separate personas, and are therefore equally to blame for the horrendous ending of Oates’s story. Oates makes it clear that, “Connie’s parents, who seem quite typical, have disqualified themselves as moral guides for her” when she expresses how little they are actually involved in Connie’s life (Wegs 100). However, it seems that Oates is trying to additionally add that the typical parents in this typical suburban lifestyle tend to have little true involvement in their children’s lives altogether. In fact, Connie’s friend June’s dad tended to drive the girls around and, “when he came to pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done” (Oates 1). I believe that this reoccurring expression of minor neglect from the children’s parents is just another criticism of the everyday lives we have all grown so accustomed to that we never think to question what we are doing wrong, until it is thrown in our faces in an act as strong the abduction of a fifteen year old girl.
          I believe that this lack of personal analysis as a society was one of the driving forces that pushed Oates to write this short story. Although it may appear as a mystery or horror piece, Oates makes multiple underlying critiques towards the lives that most of her readers probably know all too well. Oates makes the life of Connie and her friends and family very familiar, using pop culture references and explaining each aspect of Connie’s family and the town she lives in in order to make the readers feel a sense of comfort and relatability to the story. Oates then uses this comfort and completely turns the direction of the plot around, showing her readers what this type of shallow, ignorant, neglectful lifestyle can lead to, in a fairly grotesque way, leaving the readers questioning their own actions or, where they’re going in life, and where they have been.

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Print.

Wegs, Joyce M. “’Don’t You Know Who I Am?’: The Grotesque in Oate’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” Journal of Narrative Technique 5, 1995. Print.