The Symbolism Of Numbers In Short Stories

Interpretation and perception of things can vary differently from person to person. Everything is not only black and white, but extremely colorful in the way people view things differently. I would not think that Oates story was based upon a real event or that numbers can be in a graph that can make words form the bible, connecting them. I know that the bible has numbers in it, but I do not think that you can take a random number and connect it straight to a chapter and verse in the bible. I believe that short stories can be fiction or nonfiction, but not both, and I believe that numbers represent plain numbers. Most people think of numbers as numbers, but to others, they can have multiple meanings. The three numbers on the side of Arnolds
car is another example of how things in Oates’ story are open to interpretation. Hurley lists different ways to interpret the 33, 19, and 17 that are on the side of the gold convertible. He notes that if you add all of the numbers up, it comes out to be sixty-nine.
The number sixty-nine has been deemed as a sexual number, which correlates with Arnolds sexual demeanor towards Connie (Hurley 63). At the end of the story, it is to be suspected that Arnold takes Connie and rapes her, so I can see how Hurley believes that the numbers added up can be correlated to that ending (Oates 5). Another conclusion that can be made is that the numbers are derived from chapters of Judges and Genesis from the old testament of the bible. This is quite surprising to me because I would not have thought that anything from the story could be traced back to the bible. Judges is the thirty third book from the end of the old testament. Judges 19:17 reads, “When he raised his eyes he got to see the man, the traveler, in the public square of the city. So the old man said: ‘Where are you going, and where do you come from?’”. From that, you can see how some would perceive
how that is how Oates could have gotten the title for her story (Hurley 63). It is odd to think that the two are correlated, especially for a coming of age story such as this one. I think that it is just a coincidence that those words match the title of the story. I do not believe that it has anything to do with where Oates got the idea of the name of her story. Hurley also references Genesis 19:17 based upon a “simple numerical table” (Hurley 64). The word Genesis adds up to thirty-three according to the table. Although that verse was brought up, there was no correlation to the story written by Oates (Hurley 64). Short stories can be fiction and non-fiction, but when I read Oates story, I could not imagine it being related to a true event. According to Quirk, Oates could have gotten the idea for the story from a real life murder tragedy. He believes that Oates drew the idea from Charles Schmid who murdered Alleen Rowe, who happened to be the same age as Connie (Quirk 416, Oates 1). In this real life murder, there were two men who persuaded Alleen to go on a drive with them, just like Friend wanted Connie to go ride with him. In the dessert, two men reaped Alleen and then proceeded to kill her and bury her (Quirk 416). With something as tragic as this, I would hope that no one would make a story out of it to sell to the public such as Quirk believes Oates did. Another odd thing about the murder of Alleen was that she had washed her hair right before Schmid and his friends made it to her house. They also knew that she was home alone because her family was away, exactly like Connie’s family was at a family barbeque (Quirk 417, Oates 4). With so many similarities, it is easy to see how these two stories are correlated. It is hard for me to understand how Oates could write a story with such a sad ending of a girl coming to age and losing herself in the process, but harder to think that she got the idea from something that actually happened (Oates 6). There are a lot of similarities with Oates’ story and Alleen’s, but I believe that this is a story that Oates decided to tell by herself. I doubt she wrote the story with Alleen Rowe in mind, or if she even knew who Alleen was. Arnold Friend’s friend Ellie is a strange character in Oates’ story.
When I first read the story, I did not know what to think of him. Ellis makes a broad connection that Ellie could be Eddie, the guy that Connie met with at the dinner for three hours (Oates 1, Ellis 56). He notes that the two names are similar in their spelling. He believes that the name Eddie comes from how he “eddies” while sitting in his chair due to “bottled up sexual pressure” (Ellis 56). I do not think that is how Oates got the name, but I do believe that Ellie was nervous and him being a boy, probably did have sexual intentions towards Connie. Oates never made it clear that Connie saw Eddie because it was dark and she did not really care to see his face (Oates 1-2). With Arnold knowing so much about Connie’s friends and family, he could have been told all of that from Eddie because of how long they that they were together. With that, I understand how the two people, Ellie and Eddie, could be the same person. When Ellie was in Arnold’s car, Oates never says that Connie gets a good look at him, and he does not speak. Therefore, Connie would not have been able to recognize him as Eddie
anyway.