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Narrative of teenage pregnancy
Narrative of teenage pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy as an essay
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Determining who somebody really is has become more difficult throughout the years as many people zealously find ways to conceal their true identities in order to blend in or hide from society’s standards. In the stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and “Life After School” by Joyce Carol Oates, the author establishes that each of her primary characters are masking their true identities in order to be seen differently and/or to be accepted by others. Because each of Oates’ characters tries to conceal their true feelings or intent, the primary characters of each story are ultimately left with an unsolvable dilemma. In today’s society it is not uncommon for women, especially teenagers or young adults, to hide their true sexual …show more content…
Because of her provocative clothing and attitude, Arnold takes a liking in Connie and decides that he will stalk her …show more content…
Arnold Friend, the antagonist in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is an older man who hides his true identity and blends in with younger teenage boys in order to harm Connie, the protagonist. He attempts to take on the role of a young and happy-go-lucky type of man in order to more easily persuade Connie that he is trustworthy and only trying to show her a good time. While Connie and Arnold interact, she notices all the things he wears and the painting of his car, recognizing the style and referring that it is all similar to that of the other boys she’s been with. However, after a few minutes of conversing with Arnold Friend, Connie soon realizes that he isn’t really who he says he is. “She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older…” (Oates, 832). After his facade is seen through, he quickly becomes more demanding of Connie and develops a more threatening tone. His friendly attitude becomes almost non-existent as he begins to threaten Connie directly and state that he wishes to become her lover, a notion which Connie has most likely not dealt with before. Arnold’s false persona most likely disappeared after her took Connie from her home, and his truer and more vicious identity arose and was ultimately the cause for Connie’s permanent change in personalities through violent
Through the discussion of terms such as supercrip and home, alongside discussion of labels that he chooses to accept or leave behind, Clare is able to analyze the way that he looks as his identities. Clare’s autobiography uses words and language as a tool to show that a person’s identities aren’t simply labels, but are ways to understand oneself, unite, and even find a place to
Regardless of the impossibility of becoming an entirely different person, many people attempt to model themselves after those they admire. Instead, they develop a fake public persona, which allows them to play the part of their ideal character. In the novel Hate List by Jennifer Brown and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, characters’ public personas allow them to achieve their inner desires. Whether it is to become a hero, to gain control, or to be loved, each character develops a fake public persona that allows them to become the person they aspire to be.
Everyone has a poker face. Everyone has a bunbury. Everyone keeps secrets, and everyone lies. The question is, how does one tell if another is truthful about their intentions? There are many different cases in which one will lie about who they really are, but there is no telling when it is okay and if they can be forgiven. In many different stories that were read in Late British Literature this semester, we have characters that keep secrets from friends and loved ones. The simple truth is, people’s words are often different from the truth.
During the teenage years they no longer want to be labeled the “child; matter of fact, they have a strong desire to rebel against the family norms and move quickly into adulthood. This transition and want for freedom can be a very powerful and frightening thing as there are evils in this world that cannot be explained. Most parents try to understand and give their teens certain freedoms, but at what expense? Joyce Oates gives us a chilly story about a teenager that wanted and craved this freedom of adulthood called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. This is a haunting story of a young girl by the name of Connie who gives us a glimpse of teenager transitioning from childhood with the need for freedom and the consequences of her actions. Connie is described as a very attractive girl who did not like her role in the family unit. She was the daughter who could not compare to her older sister and she felt her Mom showed favoritism towards her sister. Connie is your average teen who loves music, going out with friends, and she likes the attention she receives from boys. During this time, Connie is also growing into her sexuality and is obsessing with her looks as she wants and likes to be noticed by the opposite sex. Her sexual persona and need to be free will be what is fatal to her character’s life and well-being.
All three writers explore self-deception using specific characters, none of whom have the same world-view as the other characters in their respective texts. The
...face, the veil of pretension, appearances, lies, and self-deception. The unconscious desires and guilt are suppressed and cornered away in one's conscious. In short, Mr. Hooper mirrors the true nature of humans around him. Only when the true nature of life and the freedom of truth is observed can the veil be lifted.
“Where are you going, where have you been?” Is set in a surbuban American in the 50s and 60s in a world with sexual revolution, yet still fundamentally conservative. In the story only men, never women are seen driving, the model of womanhood is still limited, depicted by the dowdy and domestic June. Things are changing in the world with new honors for young women like Connie. One of the existential themes playing a major role in the story is the choice between right and wrong. Arnold friend comes to the new world but the threat he represents, with violence and control, is a much older one. In the story Connie is living in a fantasy like all other 15 year old
When life becomes a question of survival, do rules in everyday life/ behavior seem to matter? Lies and deceit can show to be motive if or when life is threatened. Throughout this paper it will become apparent that when put into a certain position where there are decisions to be made, everyone might show another side of themselves that you may not have known to be there. Within the story, Night lies and deceit will prove to show not only character traits, but how they affect decisions that are made and how the overall ending is changed due to denial that comes along with it all.
In deduction, the book shows how putting up a façade can affect the rest of your paths in life. Whether it is fashioning a new person like Gatsby did or not acknowledging who you are like Nick does.
In her famous short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates shows the transition from childhood to adulthood through her character Connie. Each person experiences this transition in their own way and time. For some it is leaving home for the first time to go to college, for others it might be having to step up to a leadership position. No matter what, this transition affects everyone; it just happens to everyone differently. Oates describes Connie's unfortunate coming of age in a much more violent and unexpected way than the typical coming of age story for a fifteen year old girl.
the lack of knowing her true self lets Arnold Friend overpower her in the end. The words and letters on Arnold’s car symbolize warnings that Connie should have picked up on. Because Arnold symbolizes the devil, the evil inside of him gives him advantages to manipulate Connie into leaving her house, despite everything inside of Connie screaming at her not to go. The symbolisms in these objects or people are all deeply rooted to the theme of this short story, “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”.
Today we live in a world that keeps us on the run. There is a way to get in contact with anyone at any given time. There is no such thing as ‘getting away’ because we have created a society of people that want to be found. But it is also through this technology, the same one that keeps us connected to the outside world, that we can get lost. The simplest video game can help a person escape into a different reality, spending hours on end in front of a computer screen, looking for nothing in particular on e-bay. This gets us lost. We engulf ourselves in things that have nothing to do with our daily lives because we’ve had enough, our life is too much to handle. So we focus on AIM, or video games, anything that can take us out of our life, and into something better. But then where do we draw the line? When does it become okay to spend an entire day on the computer because life was too stressful? Or, still worst, when the life we lead to get away, becomes our daily life. We lie about our lives and retell occurrences that really did not take place. Things that happened on our mental breaks become reality. These lies then have to proceed and grow, because we don’t want to be exposed. That cannot happen because that would add more stress, but what we don’t realize is that by perpetuating the lies we become more and more stressed. The exact reason we needed to get away has come back full circle. In the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the line between truth and illusion has very nearly disappeared. No longer does the reader know when the character is telling the truth or embellishing a lie. Even still is the character himself is being honest to his personality.
Viola's male masquerade also calls attention to the more general theme of masking. As Cesario, Viola suggests that things are not always as they seem, that identities are protean, that self-deception rivals self-knowledge and that only Time can untie complicated "knots." Coppelia Kahn points out that the cross-dressing in Twelfth...
Blanche and Viola contribute to the development of the theme of hidden identity, although their methods of disguise differ. Viola’s disguise is more obvious to the audience at the start. Viola’s focus is on disguising her physical identity; it is necessary for Viola to hide her identity so she can start to re-build her life. However, the same could be said for the intentions of Blanche’s disguise. Blanche’s disguise covers her past actions and her present emotions. Both women cling to their disguises through the plot but they have very different relationships with their disguises. Viola’s hidden identity is born out of the need to survive and she views her disguise as a “wickedness” (II,ii, 24). Blanche, on the other hand “[doesn’t] want realism” and uses her disguise to shield others and herself from the reality of who she really is (Williams 86).
Indeed, Victorian women are molded into the socially calibrated model of The Looking-glass self, a structural theory in which Cooley proposes that people shape their identity largely based on their understanding of how other perceive them, and the social environment thus serves as the “mirror” that reflects desirable images of themselves. According to Cooley, the stages of The Looking-glass self involves imagining how one looks to others, imagining how other are judging her, and finally developing herself through such possible judgement. A hypothesis can be formed here, that Victorian women must develop this looking-glass self by concealing socially or individually unacceptable impulses from their consciousness. In the case of Clarissa, she represses her rather primitive sexual feelings toward Sally for fear of social judgement, and must construct an identity reflective of the feminine qualities desired by the society. But Clarissa’s looking-glass self is quite problematic, because it is only a manifestation of her attempt to repress real emotions. All forms of repression, according to Freud, cause disease within the mind and body— they will gradually boil inside the beings and finally explode. Interestingly, Clarissa never “explodes” her repressed feelings