Connie's Lack of Guidance

I totally agree that Connie seeks to construct her own morals and identity through her exploits with her friends. Her lack of guidance at home has made her morality fall into their hands (and the hands of the boys they seek). I disagree, however, with some of the assertions about her mother. While it's clear that her father might as well not even be in her life and June is by no means a good role model for Connie, her mother isn't as bad as all that. They do share a connection, however small, and I can't help but feel that, though some of Connie's preoccupation with looks may have something to do with her mother (a point we touched on in class based on eras), her mother is responsible for some of the misgivings Connie might feel about the route she is taking. I think it's pretty clear, however, that Connie is attempting to develop her identity as best she can based on who appreciates her, hence the lean towards sexuality. Her persona with her friends is one to attract their attention and complements, whereas her appearance at home is very different. While some of that may come from the fact that being promiscuous at home would be frowned upon, I also think she has developed home as a place where she can just be, chill out, listen to music, etc. whereas going out with friends is an exploration into something just out of reach (adulthood). If we think about the dream theory in this aspect, I think it's only fitting that her adventurous love life follows her home. I think this shows that, somewhere, she does care about her family quite a bit as well as her home and the fact that the initially appealing ideal of boys paying attention to her turns quite dark as her misgivings come to the surface as Arnold threatens her home and her family.

Identity is something that must largely be established on one's own, and for Connie this is especially true. Her mother usually just fights with her, her sister's the exact opposite of what Connie wants to become, and her father is almost a nonentity in the story. She also doesn't have any larger group to fall back on; she isn't part of any organized religion, and she can't truly be a part of the cultural revolutions in New York and Los Angeles from her suburban home in Nowhere, USA. Because she doesn't seem to have any external environmental sense guiding her identity, she has to define it by herself through her own thoughts and actions. 

Connie obviously needs a list of traits to gather a sense of who she is. But with no good role models to turn to who can help to tell her who she is, she needs to take a look at herself--in Connie's case, literally. She salvages what little meaningful information she can get out of her conversations with her mother, and the thing she finds to be most important in her mother's eyes is beauty. Oates writes, "Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie" (614). When Connie looks at her mother, she sees a woman who was once young and pretty and happy but has decayed into a hypercritical, angry wreck. Is she really at fault for looking at this and at her plain, uninspired sister and determining that beauty and youthful vivacity are what she should strive to achieve? The only times Connie's mother pays attention to her regard beauty, and so Connie gravitates toward that idea. Corresponding with this, Connie seeks out other people who will primarily appreciate her for her looks: in other words, boys not interested in committed relationships. Another driving force behind this is Connie's gender. She lives in a society where very little is expected of women besides beauty, and she understands from her mother that beauty is fleeting. With no male role models and no external forces of guidance to govern her, Connie is chiefly surrounded by weak women. Of course this isn't going to make her want to go to college and earn a six-figure salary because there's nobody in her life who even represents that idea. When Connie looks at herself, she looks at how other people view her, observes that beauty seems to be the main aspect of her personality, and proceeds to spend her entire life trying to maximize her attractiveness and interact with individuals who will respect her for that attractiveness. Connie's values are driven by her identity; once she determines that Connie is a girl who is attractive, she decides to become the best Connie she can be.

From there, her actions further develop her identity. She goes from "the girl who is beautiful" to "the beautiful girl who goes to the hamburger joint several times a week and picks up boys." Oates uses the following wonderful metaphor to get her point across: at the restaurant, "the music was always in the background like music at a church service, it was something to depend upon" (615). The burger restaurant becomes Connie's church, her friends her role models. Initially seeking an outlet for the one thing her distanced family notices about her (her beauty), Connie synthesizes an entire personality revolving around independence and promiscuity. Once she establishes this identity, she creates a corresponding moral code. Connie's lack of guidance ultimately results in an individual based on vanity and sex because that's all she has to hold on to.

No humans grow up with an absolute lack of guidance. Connie is influenced by her mother’s emphasis on appearances and her father’s absence from her life. She’s influenced by the attention of boys. She’s influenced by loud music and the glamour of urban life. The reader can readily point out the many negative aspects of Connie’s life and claim that they caused her to become promiscuous and rebellious. But what happened to the idea of accountability? It’s so easy for a person to point to other people for causing his problems. In the same way, Connie isn’t entirely free of responsibility; it’s all too easy to blame Connie’s parents and the environment she grew up in. Ultimately Connie is the one making decisions for herself. In fact, humans are innately able to make wise decisions that will benefit them in the future. In ancient times, this meant that humans were able to calculate how much food they should store during the winter to avoid starvation. In modern times, this means that Connie is able to make good choices for herself regardless of her morality and upbringing. She is fully in control of her decision-making; she simply thinks that fitting in to the rebellious culture of the 60s is more important than making mature choices.

Without guidance, where does someone turn? With parent's that are aren't very present in Connie's life, it makes most sense that Connie should turn to her sister but she doesn't because June is too "plain". Connie gets involved in "high risk" activities like having a lot sex and talking to strangers as a way to ask for guidance. If she shows her parents how desperately she needs a moral compass, maybe they will try harder to give her one. On page 614, Connie get's frustrated with her mother's petty remarks and wishes "she herself was dead and it was all over." Connie's risk-seeking behavior is connected to the frustration she has with her home life. Everything she does asks for trouble, and she knows it. Going to a diner with where "older kids" hang out, having relations with boys in dark alleys, and going to the front door when a creepy car stops in front of her house. I think that Connie wants her parents to scold her about something that matters. She wants them to discipline her and establish some sort of moral code to live by.

I agree with the statement that Connie is a young girl who wants to be seen. While it is understood that girls at her age and in her time period wanted to be noticed by boys, I think more than anything Connie wants to be noticed by her parents and she thinks that the only way she can do this is by putting herself in situations that could be threatening to her.

Connie compensates for her lack of guidance by living a life in which she focuses her energy on temporary matters, not ones that bear any significance for her life in the future. The animosity between Connie and her mother has forced her to find catharsis through coquettish, and promiscuous, behavior, which she knows is in direct opposition to her family's binding expectations. Her behavior is not specifically geared to fuel the ailing relationship with her mother, instead, it serves to explore the dilemma of trying to live under one's own expectations when they are in reality irrelevant to the surrounding environment. Connie's pursuit of Arnold is more about how she wants to live than how she likes to live, but because her family's circumstances are so detestable, Connie cannot distinguish between the two ideas. This confusion can be seen when she first interacts with Arnold, as she is more than willing to give him the advantage in their conversations for immediate exchange of a lifestyle that does not exist in the world. Therefore, her identity is different for everyone she has a relationship with, but no true identity can ever be found.

I find that Connie is not completely in the dark in terms of morality and identity, but is without a clear guide. She uses the strains placed on her by the counter culture movement, as well as her personal ideas to guide herself. It is obvious that she is incredibly insecure, and prioritizes whatever activity or person makes her the happiest. Equipped with a nearsightedness that centers on aesthetics and emotional sentiment, Connie is guided not by parental figures or some higher form of morality but by existentialist tenets. Therefore, instead of realizing that she lacks a guide and looking for a way to find one, Connie seems to avoid the possibility of having a moral guide at all. She steers clear of her parents and rebels against the confines set by her parents' generation. By doing so, Connie's morals and identity remain unclear.

At face value, many took Connie for a risqué, maybe capricious character whose identity was as unclear as her morals. Digging a bit deeper, I find much of the common teen bestowed in her actions and reactions. The relatable line, for me, was when Connie and her friend admitted "it felt good" to turn a boy down. For some unknown, dark reason, I have experienced the same feeling, and I know many others have as well. That line prompted me to begin contemplating the subconscious world that David and Gary both touched on. I, too, have taken psychology and immediately thought of Freud's ego, superego, and id. From there, everything Connie did seemed to be an act of her subconscious; an exploration of dark thoughts and feelings she had that she was too scared to fully approach. Arnold Friend is the perfect character of subconscious thought because, in a similar way to the Oedipus complex, Connie's lack of a male parental guide may have left her yearning for older male approval (not daddy issues, promise). If Connie's actions are all approached with the idea that they are reactions to her subconscious self, her morals and identity are of little importance. Whether the story is all a dream or not does not matter, because Connie's actions can be looked at the same either way.