Impressions versus Reality - Essay Example

Impressions vs. Reality Impressions of people are often the first thing we use to judge others, but are not always as correct as we assume them to be. For example, in the business world, it is often warned that “Within the first few seconds, people pass judgment on you – looking for common surface clues. Once the first impression is made, it is virtually irreversible” (Sterling, 2002). However, this process is not limited to just the business world and is not limited to just those times when you’re trying to make an impression. Every time two people come into contact, this process is enacted to some degree or another and can be based on a number of factors, such as a person’s name. This can be seen in the short stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates through her characters Connie and Arnold Friend as well as in “Black Men in Public Space” by Brent Staples through the narrator’s own experiences. The first character to be introduced in Oates’ story is Connie, a teenaged girl just beginning to discover the world outside of her parents’ home. As this character is examined, a trope is revealed in her name itself. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, one of the definitions of ‘trope’ is “a word or expression used in a figurative sense” (2009). Connie’s name suggests a person involved in a con, or farce of some kind as she certainly is. At home, she is the typical lazy but innocent teenager, but in public she attempts to become someone quite different. “Everything about her had two sides to it; one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out” (Oates). She is not what she seems to be which makes her a ‘con’ artist. Her mother understands her to be irritating and lazy but generally innocent while Oates makes it clear that Connie has been sexually active in opening her story with an example of Connie’s typical evenings out as she ditches her friend in order to spend the evening with a boy named Eddie. “She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza” (Oates). While her mother continues to have an impression of her daughter as a child, Arnold Friend’s first impression of her is of a girl fully aware of her ability to entice another. At the same time, though, Connie is proven to be every bit as innocent as she seems when the real world comes to her. While she feels she has the entire world at her fingertips, her first encounter with a true criminal proves her actual innocence. Connie first meets Arnold Friend as she is walking to the car of another boy, illustrating she is not quite as innocent as her mother believes her to be. As she looks around, though, Connie notices the admiring glance of who she will later learn is Arnold Friend, a character involving another trope in the name through the deliberate contradiction in terms. Her first impression of Arnold is that he is a somewhat strange boy with sloppy hair and a strange colored car who behaves in a disturbing way. While she makes a goofy face at him to let him know she’s not interested in him, she still recognizes Arnold as just another boy that she can easily manipulate the way she has manipulated a number of other boys before. She retains this impression as they begin to talk at her house, but the more they talk, the stranger he seems. Although he makes all the correct moves, wears the correct clothes and listens to the correct radio station to pass himself off as a teenager just slightly older than herself, Connie begins to realize even from across the driveway that Arnold Friend is not what he appears to be. “She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older – thirty, maybe more” (Oates). Friend tries to assure her that he’s only 18, but Connie notices lines around his mouth when he smiles and a strange look to his eyes that indicate something is wrong. As she learns more about him, Connie realizes that first impressions can be as misleading as a name. “His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered make-up on his face but had forgotten about his throat” (Oates). In the end, Connie feels she has no option but to accept Arnold’s ‘friendship’ while the reader is left with the distinct impression that something awful is about to happen to Connie. While a great deal of the narrator’s experience is based on the outward reactions of other people’s impressions of the narrator, Brent Staples’ story demonstrates that these impressions are not always founded on the individual’s personal presentation. Instead, they are often based upon previous experience and external social issues that have little to nothing to do with the individuals involved. Staples story is a reflection piece on his personal experience as a black man attempting to live a ‘normal’ life in the city. He opens the story in a way that deliberately builds upon modern society’s impression of the urban single black man. He says, “My first victim was a woman--white, well-dressed, probably in her late twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago” (Staples). As his story progresses, Staples makes it clear that his ‘victim’ was only a victim in her own mind based upon her own fears of what a black man on a night-darkened city street might mean to her. As she notices that he, a black man in jeans and a jacket, has started to walk a safe distance behind her on a night-time street, she quickens her pace, eventually driving herself to blatantly run from his presence even though he’d given and intended no indication of threat. Staples moves on to illustrate the type of fear he instills in people simply by virtue of his being black and alone on a given evening in spite of the fact that he actually has a very gentle nature. At one point, he even mentions how he “is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken – let alone hold one to a person’s throat” (Staples). Even though he wears a suit during the day, the moment he appears at night in a set of comfortable clothes, other people’s impressions, founded on past experience, stereotypes and reported facts of the city immediately label him as dangerous and tend to place him in danger as well. Both of these stories focus on how impressions shape who and what we are to different people. Connie is able to retain her innocent identity at home because of her parents’ expectations of what they should see and Connie’s deliberate attempts to ensure they continue seeing that. At the same time, though, she is proven to be not so innocent in the deliberate way that she goes about fooling her parents and becoming someone else when her parents aren’t around, giving meaning to her name ‘Con’nie. However, when she meets someone who is truly a professional at disguising who he really is, Arnold ‘Friend’, she discovers that she was really very innocent all along. Although Friend is able to create an impression of a much younger individual, he is not able to disguise his intentions from Connie or the reader as he coerces the girl from her home. Like Connie, Staples creates an instant impression based upon how he looks, but unlike Connie, this impression does not necessarily work for his benefit. Instead, people he encounters seem to base their impression of him upon specific stereotypes of his race and gender, seeing in him something menacing and dangerous despite his true nature or the benignity of his actions. As Martha Brockenbrough (2008) suggests, there does seem to be a place in our brains where our impressions are sorted out lightning fast on an emotional level that are based not as much on what’s actually seen but instead on a combination of factors. “The conclusions this secret room in your mind generates are based on your experiences and your environment, which includes social stereotypes that you might even reject on a conscious level” (Brockenbrough, 2008). As there seems to be no means by which one might shut off this mechanism to understand the actual scene, one must instead learn how to recognize when judgments might be based on erroneous assumptions. Works Cited Brockenbrough, Martha. “First Impressions: How Much do They Really Matter?” Encarta. (2008). January 26, 2009 Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, Where have you been?” The Ontario Review. 1991. January 26, 2009 Staples, Brent. “Black Men and Public Space.” Harpers. (December 1987). Sterling, Michelle T. “First Impressions.” About Entrepreneurs. (2002). January 26, 2009 < http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/uc051603a.htm> “Trope.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. (2009). January 26, 2009 Outline Introduction The problem with quick impressions Thesis statement: This can be seen in the short stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates through her characters Connie and Arnold Friend as well as in “Black Men in Public Space” by Brent Staples through the narrator’s own experiences. Connie from “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” ‘Con’ artist - trope Expected impressions – her mother First impressions – Arnold Friend Arnold Friend from “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Deliberate first impression Deliberate trope Unmasking of the impression Narrator of “Black Men in Public Spaces” The presumption of assumptions Deliberate play on stereotypes illustrates falseness Unmasking of the impression – narrator is very gentle and understanding Conclusions Impressions shape who and what we are to different people. Impressions are sometimes false either through deliberate or accidental means. This cannot be avoided, so we have to be aware of our own attitudes to avoid causing harm. Read More