Connie and the grandmother: a striking resemblance
             Two characters, one an adolescent and beautiful, the other aged and outdated, are distinguishably parallel and dissimilar in many ways. Connie is a naive, pubescent girl who is portrayed in Joyce Carol Oates' "Where are you going? Where have you been?" In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the grandmother is introduced as a whiny, old-fashioned character. On the outside the characters seem to be living in two different worlds; looking deeper into the works of Oates and O'Conner, one can see the correlations between these separate worlds that they live in.
             Firstly, the major flaw of Connie and the grandmother is that neither of them lives in reality. Connie sees her life as a movie. She is greatly influenced by pop-culture and repeatedly relies on music as a safe-haven in situations and daydreams of her life being like the movies. For instance, when Connie and her friend go to the diner, a situation in which Connie is somewhat unfamiliar and anxious, Oates writes, "the music was always on in the background . . . it was something to depend on"(Kennedy and Gioia 656). On the other hand, the grandmother lives her life in another time. Stuck in the past, she relates everything to her time. She once tells her grandchildren, "In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then"(Kennedy and Gioia 432). Both live in their own, disconnected worlds.
             What the two find important also plays a major factor in their similarity. Both Connie and the grandmother, overall, see themselves as important. Both are concerned of their appearance and impressions on other people and both put their wants in front of others. When a strange vehicle comes down to Connie's house, instead of concerning herself with who it was and whether or not...