Sorry this is late!

The "Swimmer" and "Where are you Going..." go really well with our essential question that asks how the use of the archetypal lens helps us understand, or challenges cultural views. Connie is an important archetype as well as Arnold Friend.

Connie's character is archetypal because she is a really releatable character. She is not quite popular, and single and her main desires are really to attract the attention of a boy and become a little more dangerous, and a little more popular. Her experience of attracting Arnold and ending up leaving the way she had to are the elements of the story that may challenge the accepted cultural views of that time and this time depending on who the reader is. For a younger reader, closer to Connie's age, this would challenge her views of what happens when a girl tries to meet a boy in hgigh school or what happens when a girl matures enough to be attractive to men. The Story goes one step further and warns girls that what happens isn't what they think will happen. Instead of just an innocent high school romance, or even more physical acts, She gets taken away completely. But for parents, I feel like this story would be seen differently. Instead of challenging their norms, a parent with a daughter would say something like, "This kind of thing will happen to you." We would not be teaching adults, so I guess that is moot. Still, I think "Where are you going..." Challenges most student's norms.

Connie's situation both a ligns with cultural norms and challenges them. Arnold, I'm not as sure about. He is older, so there is an archetype for the older, wiser, attractive (?) man. An older man with a younger girl is dangerous by assumption, so in than case, the story helps us understand why this character in the story and in real life is so dangerous. Underneath everything that Connie wants, he is danger. In real life, this may be implicit danger. Dangerous people don't usually identify themselves the way that Arnold does in the story, but there he has license to threaten her family. He exists in the story as an archeytpe and a warning. His behavior, although strange, is not so surprising.

I think I'm contradicting myself, but I think Connie's situation challenges cultural norms, but Arnold's character does not.