with whom she enjoys making out. The irony, though, is that when she finally decides to go with him, it is not for a simple joyride and make-out session but for a far more sinister reason.

A further irony lies in the wish that Connie expresses early in the story that "she herself was dead and it was all over." She thinks these thoughts in response to her mother nagging at her, and she's obviously not serious. In the end, though, when Arnold is demanding that she come with him, she cries for her mother. When she makes the decision to go with Arnold, a decision that might really cost her life, she thinks of her mother. "She thought, I might not see my mother again."

Connie's ultimate decision to accompany Arnold is heroic because she does it to save her family. She obviously is no longer attracted to Arnold, and she knows that something bad will happen to her, but she does it anyway because Arnold has threatened to hurt her whole family if she doesn't. He says, "But if you don't come out we're going to wait till your people come home and then they're all going to get it." That's how Arnold manages to get her out the door without force: by threatening her family.

It is ironic that Connie, in her search for teenage identity, has longed to experience the forbidden delights of courtship and romance. On the day Arnold shows up at her door, Connie has managed to avoid a family outing and is enjoying having the house to herself, feeling the warmth of the sun as if it "were...the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before". Her romantic notions are completely dashed in the person of Arnold, however. He appears at her door as a suitor might, but he represents the total and unequivocal perversion of everything she imagined romance and love to be. Instead of embarking with him on an experience of tenderness and discovery, Connie is going to be raped and killed.

Although it might be argued that when Connie decides to go with Arnold, it is not a decision on her part at all, but a helpless capitulation to his demonic manipulation, her action, as recognized by the author, has an element of heroism to it. In an article written by Oates quoted in the reference listed below, the author credits Connie with "an unexpected gesture of heroism" in complying with Arnold to save her family. Arnold has promised not to come into the house to get her, so Connie does have the option of waiting him out until her family returns, but, fearing that he will harm them if she does, she chooses to go with him, even to her death.