Cigarette Girl

The movie "Cigarette Girl" is very hard to imagine as a written piece of literature, but I truly think that once you see a movie it is hard to differentiate yourself from the actors in the movie and allow yourself to see the characters for themselves. But as I watched the movie I tried to imagine how the writer would have written it out on paper and how much detail he would have to go into to show the amount of descriptiveness that he was able to portray with his movie. The main character of the movie is Cigarette Girl who is a young woman who sells cigarettes in the smoking section for a mob-like group of people that hang out at their headquarters Vice City. The movie is set in 2035 when cigarette smoking has been banned in the city and people who still choose to smoke are restricted to the smoking-section of the city and a pack of smokes cost sixty dollars! Cigarette Girl deals with three main issues in the movie. One is her grandmother who is the only person that she has left in the world is dying from emphazyma in a hospital in the city. Also at the beginning of the movie, Cigarette Girl gets fired from her job because she doesn't show up for three days due to her grandmother being sick and they know that she has been undercutting the prices of the cigarettes and selling them for fifty dollars. So now they are replacing her with a younger and more trainable cigarette girl. On top of all of this you get to see Cigarette girl face her personal demons and go through hell while trying to quit smoking. This guy with boots and a cowboy hat keeps appearing throughout the movie and at first it doesn't explain who he is, but then you realize that he is a resemblance of the iconic "Marlboro Man" and that he is just in her head. The use of this symbolic figure is to show her personal struggle with her addiction. I really thought that the way in which the writer developed her character so fully that you could understand her pain and strengths was amazing. The movie was definitely an experience I enjoyed.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates

Group 1:

             The story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates is dedicated to Bob Dylan because of a song that he wrote called “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”. Both the song by Dylan and the story by Oates are loosely based on the true story of Charles Schmid, who preyed on and murdered three young girls in Arizona. Dylan’s song is very cryptic in its meaning, like a lot of songs can be, and I believe that Oates wanted to expand upon the ideas from his song by writing a story. I think that she dedicates it to him because she wanted to give him credit for inspiring her to write a longer version of his song.

Group 2:

               In the story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates, Arnold Friend is a creepy older guy who tries to appear young in order to prey on young girls like Connie, the main character. He starts off just watching Connie at the diner, but then he says to her in passing, “Gonna get you, baby” which is a clue to what happens at the end of the story where he shows up at her house when she is alone. While at her house he tries to calmly convince her into getting in the car with him and his friend to go for a ride, but to no avail and that’s when he threatens her and talking very sexually. Arnold Friend is portrayed as a crazy predator who wants to rape Connie and in the way that he talks; she would not be his first victim.
        I think that Arnold Friend is a very appropriate name for this character because he is trying to convince her that he is her friend who is her age and doesn’t want to hurt her. Like when he says, “I wanta introduce myself, I’m Arnold Friend and that’s my real name and I’m gonna be your friend, honey…”. He tries to do everything he can to reassure Connie that he is an okay guy and that she shouldn’t be scared to go for a ride with him like the way he is dressed. Arnold Friend dresses in clothes that all the high school students wear to try to appear like people Connie’s own age and appeal to Connie because she likes the boys her own age that dress like that. He even talks to her in a sing-song kind of voice that is very calm and inviting. One of the very first thing that Connie notices is his car, it is a bright gold sports car of sort that has writing all over it including his name and the secret code 33, 19, 17. The significance of the car in the story is Arnold friend uses the writing on it to get her attention and the fact that he has a car is very appealing to Connie considering she is always wanting to get away.

Group 3:

            Connie is a rebellious young girl who sneaks away from the mall and goes out with boys and to a diner across the highway unbeknownst to her mother. Connie’s mother is very clueless as to her daughter’s actions and other life away from home. She rarely has a good thing to say about Connie and only hurts her relationship with her daughter by constantly nagging her and praising Connie’s older sister June. June is portrayed as her mother’s favorite and Connie’s complete opposite. I think that June resents Connie for being so pretty and popular with the boys and so does not try to have any relationship with her. June seems like a goody two shoes that would never do anything rebellious like Connie does. Oates does not give us a very big idea of the father, but she does tell us that he works, comes home, eats, reads, and rarely talks to anyone. He seems like a very selfish person that would rather have his peace and quiet than know what is going on with his own family. I think that Oates limits the role of Connie’s family because they are not very important in her story except for why she is so rebellious. Other than that they have little to do with the conflict of Arnold Friend and Connie.

Group 4:

         The setting of the story is very important in the sense that it portrays Connie’s constant struggle within herself to break free from all barriers like the small town she lives in. It also sends a message to the reader that even in a small town there can be danger. I think Oates chooses this setting because it could be any small town with a shopping plaza, diner and highway and the reader can relate to that. I also think that she chose it to incorporate some small details of the true story of Charles Schmid that inspired her to write this one. If you look up the Charles Schmid murders it was widely known that he use to hang out at a diner that backed up to a highway much the same as in the story.

Iterations of the same story

        One story can be interpreted into many different stories based on who the author is or even the type of literature it is. Most of the time, unless giving just a factual rendition of events, the author’s own thoughts and ideas of the story that inspired them shapes what their own story becomes. That is why so many iterations of the same story can be found. One true story that inspired many writers resulting in quite a few different iterations was that of Charles Schmid, who was found guilty of murdering three young girls in Tuscon, Arizona in the early 1960’s.

        In the non-fiction iterations of this story, Murder in the Desert, Crime: Secrets in the Sand, and Arizona: Growing up in Tuscon, the true story does not change much just some give more facts than others. Murder in the Desert is a story by the attorney present at the trial of Schmid who goes into detail about the crimes and in describing Charles Schmid. They all three say that he was a young athlete who was pretty popular with the girls, wore makeup, and bragged about killing the three girls. They all said that he put things in his boots to make him appear taller, while varying on the actual objects used. While they all seemed to give pretty factual information on the case, each authors portrays a different view on the subject. While one seems to blame the friends of Charles Schmid that he supposedly bragged to for not coming forward sooner, the other puts the blame on the parent’s obliviousness to the lives of their teenagers.

         In the song by Bob Dylan, “Baby Blue”, it is harder to see the original story because of the way it is interpreted into such a vague perception of the idea. Dylan refers to a girl and a predator, but he also differs in the sense that he is almost saying that it’s all over now like the girl is okay. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates is actually created from the Bob Dylan song, but it still portrays some of the details that the original story does. Joyce talks about the creepy older guy who preys on younger girls and how he stuffs his shoes to make him taller ,but he only goes after one girl in the book and does not murder her. She even mentioned the girl having a sister and portrayed a busy road in which the girls cross to get to a burger joint, which was mentioned in Arizona: Growing up in Tuscon. The movie Smooth Talk is very much an elaborated version of Joyce Carol Oates short story and does not vary too much on the critical points of her story. But while Oates leaves the fate of the young girl up to the readers imagination, the movie portrays the girl getting raped but then being able to go home which is very different from the three girls being murdered in real life. In the YouTube version of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, the main characters are much the same as in Oates version, but the ending is changed where the girl is not harmed at all. This version is more of a spoof than an actual interpretation of the story.

          In all of the stories, the true character of Charles Schmid never really changes in the sense that he is a predator and goes after younger girls. Many of the stories keep the details about Schmid like the make-up and fact that he tries to make himself taller, but vary in the way that they tell it and how describe his nature. The iterations of the stories vary greatly because of each individual author’s beliefs and perceptions of the original story and how they want to retell it to make it their own.

Word Count: 654

Behind the stories

               When you read a story you automatically interpret what you read and it usually makes you feel something unique to you that someone else reading it may not have felt. That is the one of the main purposes of a story to evoke feeling, but sometimes it is also to portray an underlying concept or idea. This idea or value to the reader is not always easily seen and so you have to break the story down into parts that you can understand and eventually see what the author is saying. The breaking down of a story can be done usually in three main parts: the ingredients such as plot, length, characters, and time; the process in which the writer structures the piece or story; and the made thing such as the moral or value the story portrays to the reader. So taking this notion of breaking stories down, we can see a lot more of the ideas and concepts portrayed when we tear apart the story and poems we have been reading in class “A&P” by John Updike and the two Sharon Olds poems, “Rites of Passage” and “The Girl at the Boys’ Party”.

         When I read “A&P”, the story did not really do much for me and all I saw was a boy quitting his job in a noble but vain way to get the attention of a girl that he liked. But then I broke it down and it is so much more than that. Updike uses the setting of the boy, Sammy, working in a small town grocery store to build on the uniqueness of the situation that was occurring. He uses the characters Sammy and Queenie to display the trope, or common theme, of the rich girl/ poor guy that many readers have heard of which gives you a familiarity with the story. Referring to all the other shoppers as sheep shows the conformity of the time in which he wrote the book and that Sammy standing up for the girl was an act of rebellion against that conformity. He also expresses a sense of vain heroism in relation to Sammy, which to me is trying to tell the reader that sometimes acts of heroism do not always get rewarded.

          Sharon Olds’ poem “Rites of Passage” seemed similar to “A&P” in the sense that I thought this poem was really just about a mother admiring her little boy standing up for the sake of his birthday party and ending a dispute between his friends. But when I broke it down I saw how Olds used so many metaphors and similes comparing the likeness of the little boys to men. She refers to the young boys as “short men”, generals, and small bankers and uses irony with the fight and “violence” in the setting of the birthday party. The fact that she describes the son as a mother or parent gives us the feel of a parent/child relationship. She uses the conversation of the young boys to build the rest of the poem around, which she structures each line as boy, man, boy, man. Ultimately giving the reader the idea that Olds’ sees men as boys and boys as men. An underlying sense of conformity can also be seen in this poem in the way the little boys are trying to all fit in amongst one another at the party.

          Both of these pieces show a great deal of underlying conformity and the same is with “The Girl at the Boys’ Party”. Olds’ poem is about a girl who is trying to fit in at an all boy party while remaining calm and collected just doing math in her head. But when you break it down you see that she uses the math as a play on words to describe the situation at hand. Referring to the little girl as “indivisible as a prime number” saying that she is basically untouchable and she says, “and in her head she’ll be doing her wild multiplying” which makes us think that she really isn’t thinking about math at all. And she infers how the boys at the party might see the girl when she makes reference to the girl’s bathing suit as food. She uses all this to give the reader a feeling of perhaps a parent witnessing this scene of a coming of age in the child’s life. Both of Sharon Olds’ poems give the reader a sense of how the parent feels in each situation, while in “A&P” you get to witness the characters feelings first hand.

Word Count(770)

"Rites of Passage" and "The One Girl at the Boys' Party" by Sharon Olds

             A portrayal of different kinds of heroism can be seen throughout the works of Sharon Olds' poems compared to the heroism seen in John Updike's "A&P". The heroism portrayed in "A&P" is that of a boy,Sammy, standing up for a girl, who he likes and thinks is being treated unfairly, by quitting his job for her. While the poems by Sharon Olds show a different kind of heroism than Updike's story, I believe they do all share a universal idea of heroism. "Rites of Passage" is about a little boy's birthday party and his mom witnessing a quarrel between the "short men" and her son speaking up and taking control of the situation before it gets out of hand. The heroism by the boy in this particular poem can be identified with Sammy in a sense that they both take control of their very different situations. In "The One Girl at the Boys' Party", a little girl is watched by her mother at a party where she being the only girl remains calm and collected in spite of this fact.It was very difficult for me to see the heroism in this story just because it is more of the mother's view of her daughter being the only girl at the party. I think that the two poems are more about the heroism that the mothers see in their children and not about the children really trying to be heroes like Sammy is in "A&P".

Word Count:(246)

An Interview with John Updike

              In this interview, John Updike reveals why he chose to write his short story "A&P" and gives the reader insight to his feelings on the story and its characters. The story "A&P" is about how an adolescent boy, Sammy, who works in a small town grocery store quits his job over three girls that come in wearing only bikinis or at least that was my portrayal of the story. I think this interview was especially interesting because it really made me see the story for how Updike wanted it to be portrayed. Updike portrays Sammy as not only a love struck teenage boy, which is how I saw him, but as much more. He says Sammy is a rebellious, blue collar adolescent longing for a white collar girl, who in turn quits his job in a noble act of standing up for this girl. And even though I saw Sammy’s act of quitting his job as noble, I believed that it was just all for the attention of “Queenie”, the girl that he liked. But Updike’s portrayal really made me see an underlying theme that wasn’t so evident to me when I read it. Updike explains that Sammy also represents a boy who is reaching out of his norm and striving for something better in life. That Sammy is saying he is not going to be a sheep, which is how Updike refers to the customers of the A&P, he is going to do the right thing and just take the consequences. This explanation of Sammy really did shed some new light on his character for me and allowed me to see him in a more noble way. Even though I’m still not sure I would go as far to say that he is a hero, at least not by my definition of the word.

Word Count: (305)

Heroes

          The term hero is used so frequently in today's society that it has really lost its true value.Everyday there is a story in the newspaper or on the news about an athlete, a cop, or even a politician who is being referred to as a hero for what they said or did. I do not mean to say that some of these people may not in fact be actual heroes to some people, but for the most part I believe they have other motives. Even when you look up the word hero on the internet, most of the sites that come up are on people that I would never consider a hero simply because I think of heroes as being more than just a famous person. For example, some websites say that heroes of the twentieth century should include people such as Amelia Earhart, Michael Jordan, and even Muhammed Ali. I'm sure that some see these people in enlightening ways or as their own personal role models, which is perfectly fine, but I do not believe that makes them heroes. The may show heroic qualities like bravery or courage and I think that’s why we associate the word hero with so many different people.

         I believe that a hero is someone that is courageous, strong, brave and above all selfless. A true hero does not necessarily think before he acts because he is just doing or reacting to what he thinks is right. Heroes do not think of the peril involved in the act of saving someone's life because they are not thinking about themselves or what could happen to them. All the true hero is worried about is the person or people they are trying to help. I think the real heroes are the ones that do not take the credit even when it's publicized and brought to everyone's attention, unlike a lot of the fame hungry people we call heroes every day. It is the soldier who deserved the Purple Heart for saving so many people's lives but refuses to take it because he did not do it for the glory and recognition. Or the firefighter who ran into the burning building to get one more person out when they tell him it's too dangerous. In those two examples, I don't think its about that person "just doing their job", it's when they go above and beyond where not many other people would go to save someone's life, that to me is a hero.

         But it is because we just throw this word hero around so loosely and have such an indirect definition of it that we recognize people who are just doing good deeds to get attention or for ulterior motives like Sammy. I do not consider Sammy to be a hero because he was just trying to impress the girls by quitting his job. Yes I do believe that it would have been a very noble act in the way that he stood up for the girls, but I do not consider that act an act of heroism. And the only reason why he stood up to Lengel is to get the girls to see him and in hopes of catching their attention. I really do not think that standing up for something makes you a hero in most cases though and especially not when you look to gain something from it.

Chapter 1 Questions

Chapter 1 Questions Page 6: 1. The personalities of the North Wind are eager, acts without thinking, and very persistant on winning. While the Sun has a very different personality that shows he is calm and sure of himself. 2. The North Wind's efforts are ineffective because it made the man cling to his cloak the harder he blew. 3. The Sun was successful in his attempt because he shone so brightly and directly that it warmed the man rather than chilling him like the efforts shown by the North Wind, resulting in the man taking his cloak off. The Sun was patient in his attempt unlike the North Wind. 4. The Man serves as a test subject, a mere bystandard in there challenge. 5. The moral is persuasion is better than force meaning that you are more likely to get what you want by calmly persuading someone to do something rather than go about it roughly and forcefully. People in general want to feel like they have a choice and when you force someone to do something, you are taking away that choice. Page 8: 1.I believe that the exposition of this story is located in the first sentence where it portrays the characters and setting of the story. Chuang Tzu uses two sentences to set up the dramatic situation. 2. The protagonist changes the subject and mentions the turtoise to paint the two high officials a picture or to make a point of how he views the offer at hand. Instead of answering them directly, he uses the visual of the tortoise lying there dead to make them actually listen to and understand why he would object such an offer. I believe that it does serve a purpose that he asks the officials a question he already has an answer to because it is kind of like a confirmation that was already understood. 3. In this story, Chuang Tsu is a free loving non conformist who would rather live his life as he wishes than be honored for a life he does not want. Page 19-20 1. The details about the shoppers in the supermarket having a one track mind and the details given from a teenagers point of view seem particularly true to life for me. The close attention to detail makes you feel like you are there at the supermarket seeing and feeling exactly what Sammy is. 2. Updike draws more on Sammys mentality and personality than on any physical characteristics except for his age being 19. Sammy shows the traits of a teenage boy being bored at his job, lusting over girls, admirable in his unseen attempt at heroism, and immaturity. I do not believe he is any less of a hero when he wasn't seen by the girls beccause he stood up for something that he obviously felt stronly about at the time. Sammy is more fully portrayed than the doctor in the sense that you get to visualize more of his mentality. 3.The exposition seems to be when the three girls are being described and the setting of the supermarket. The portrait drawn of Queenie shows that this is not a usual event for that supermarket and that she is not like most of the usual people there. 4. Sammy goes from just seeing the girls as an object of his lust that amuse him to people that he feels that he needs to impress and stand up for, even if it is just to get there attention. 5. I believe the dramatic conflict becomes apparent when not only the manager notices the girls but also when the customers do. It sets up the fact that they don't belong there.The crisis becomes apparent when the manager comes over to talk to them. The climax of the story is when Sammy says he quits. 6. Sammy quits his job to impress the girls by standing up for them. 7.I think that when Sammy talks about the way that Queenie made him feel inside just by looking at her forshadows that he will have sympathy for her. 8. I understtod from the story that Sammy lost his job because he stood up for a girl that he wanted to impress. Sammy sees that he probably made a mistake seeing as how him quitting did nothing to impress the girls and now he has lost a job and has to face his parents that got him that job. 9. Updike makes the comment that customers are like sheep with one track minds that can easily be distracted by something out of there normal routine happening.