Joyce Carol Oates: Music Analysis

Oates uses music as Connie’s bridge from the real world into her fantasy world. Throughout the story Oates shows the importance of music in Connie’s life. Connie often listens to music and daydreams about boys. All of her ideas about boys come from the music she listens to. Connie thinks about one of the boys she went out with and feels as though the kind of love they had was the way it is promised in music (Oates 293). The songs she listens to give her everything she knows about romance. When Connie and her girl friend go out for the night Connie meets a boy named Eddie. During her hangout with Eddie, Oates writes that “…her face was gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music” (Oates
When Connie is away from home she is a different person than who she is when she is at home around her family (Oates 291). When she is away from home she is a flirtatious young teenager begging for attention from boys. After Connie’s time with Eddie she looks back at where they were as if she were soaking in the good time she had there and did not want it to go away. When her sister asks her about her night the next morning Connie responds with “So-so” (Oates 292). Oates lets readers know that the time Connie did not spend out at the plaza with her girl friend she spent around the house dreaming about her boys (Oates 292). All of her time was either spent in her fantasy world or thinking about it. Connie’s mother would have to pull her back into reality by finding stuff to keep her busy (Oates 292). After Connie’s family went to the barbecue, Oates writes that “Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was…” (Oates