Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” follows a fifteen year old Connie, who acts like any rebellious teen her age. She is self centered and loves thinking about boys. One in particular is Arnold Friend, who catches Connie’s attention from the moment he drives by the restaurant. It was only a short encounter, but his gold convertible would stay in her mind. At first he seems like a normal boy just passing by in his convertible, but as the story progresses he shows his true self. He is not what and who he says he is. From the beginning Arnold seems to be a very scheming and assertive person. While this story is following Connie the person the reader should be paying attention to is Arnold Friend, a manipulative, controlling, …show more content…
Arnold seems to be a representation of Charles Schmid, Alleen’s murderer. There are various similarities in both the story and the murder. In both cases, there are two assailants involved. Arnold had his friend Ellie and Charles Schmid had John Saunders (Coulthard 506). Even though rape was not mentioned in the story, it was implied when Connie asks what Arnold was going to do to her (Oates 332).When Arnold arrives to Connie’s house she is alone, just as Alleen was. The way Arnold is described, with his dyed black hair, stuffed boots, and muscular build, are all characteristics of Charles (Coulthard 506) Even the famous gold convertible was included in Oates’s …show more content…
Flies are usually related to supernatural incidents were evil is near. At first Arnold seems to be of Connie’s age, but as time progresses, Connie starts to see who he really is. She starts to notice all the things about Arnold that she had not before, for example, his “shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig” and the painted eyelashes (Oates 325). When he got out of his car, she noticed his crooked boot. Tierce and Crafton take a look into the supernatural side of Arnold friend and state that Arnold’s feet resemble the “devils cloven hoofs” (219). Being the devil could give Arnold the power to see and know everything that is going on with Connie’s family. Arnold also had a hard time saying “Christ.” Along with being the devil, Arnold could also be seen as her savor (Crafton and Tierce 220). He comes at a time where Connie is in need of a person to understand what she wants and make her feel better. The situation with her family makes her feel left out and leads to her resenting them. Arnold’s “X” sign is also associated with Christ. Connie sees the “X” hover in the air for a while even after Arnold was done making it (Crafton and Tierce 220). At the end when Connie decides to go with Arnold, she sees the land expand as if she was finally free and going to
Where Are You Going, Where have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates is a tale of a naive young lass taking her first steps into the illusion of the teenage dream. For the regular viewer of the film Smooth Talk, one would not pick up on the elaborate history behind the movie. Dating back to the 1960’s, the written story sheds very little light on the true sadistic nature of the means and intentions of Arnold Friend. Going back even further, the written tale is based on Life Magazine's article “The Pied Piper of Tucson” the true story of a middle aged man who preys on adolescent girls, getting away with devious sexual acts and sometimes murdering said adolescents. Without this previous knowledge, both the story and the movie seem for the most part innocent, with only a tad of creepiness generated
A spider, a zombie, a serial killer, all of these things would scare most but why do people pay good money to be scared by all these things? Because people like to be scared. Ever since people could speak to one another, they have been telling these stories. whether it be around a dim lit campfire, in the form of a book, or even on the big screen. these stories stand out through time because of their graphic word choice, unique characters, and suspense. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?” both possess these elements of word choice and suspense along with psychotic like characters such as Arnold Friend (WAYG) and the narrator (The Black Cat). Poe's character the
A good murder is hard to be. Each story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates presents characters in a dangerous situation. I will make a comparison examines important similarities and dissimilarities for these two different murders.
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean, don't fool around," he said, shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig…” (Oates 6). Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” highlights an altercation, meeting, conflict and dispute between a teenage girl, named Connie, and a psychotic rapist named Arnold Friend. Throughout their altercation, Arnold Friend tempts and encourages Connie to get in the car with him and lead her to a variety of possible dangerous situations, one of which includes her getting raped . There is no doubt that Joyce Carol Oates’ uses Arnold Friend in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” to symbolize the Devil and embody all of the evil and sinister forces that are present in our world. This becomes apparent when the reader focuses on how deranged Arnold Friend is and begins to
My definition of evil is in its most general context, is taken as the absence of that which is ascribed as being good. Often, evil is used to denote profound immorality. In this situation I would have to say Arnold’s friend most exemplifies evil. Arnold Friend could be an allegorical devil figure, the protagonist who lures Connie into riding off with him in his car, or, in the contrary, far more a grotesque portrait of a psychopathic killer masquerading as a teenager. However, he has all the traditional, sinister traits of that arch deceiver and source of grotesque terror, the devil, with his painted eyelashes, shaggy hair, and stuffed boots. In the story, Oates does make Arnold out to be a psychopathic stalker, but never objectively states the diabolical nature to his character.
Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” clearly illustrates the loss of innocence adolescents experience as they seek maturity, represented by Connie's dangerous encounter with Arnold Friend. Connie symbolizes the many teens that seek independence from their family in pursuit of maturity. Connie’s great desire to grow up is apparent from the beginning of the story, as she experiments with her sexuality. However, it is clear that Connie is not interested in pursuing a relationship, but relishes the maturity she feels after being with the opposite sex. After following a boy to his car, she was “gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place” (2). This suggests that Connie's exploits
Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is about a young girl's struggle to escape reality while defying authority and portraying herself as a beauty queen; ultimately, she is forced back to reality when confronted by a man who symbolizes her demise. The young girl, Connie, is hell- bent on not becoming like her mother or sister. She feels she is above them because she is prettier. She wants to live in a "dream world" where she listens to music all day and lives with Prince Charming. She does not encounter Prince Charming but is visited by someone, Arnold Friend, who embodies the soul of something evil. Arnold Friend symbolizes "Death" in that he is going to take Connie away from the world she once knew. Even if she is not dead, she will never be the same person again, and will be dead in spirit. With the incorporation of irony, Oates illustrates how Connie's self-infatuation, her sole reason for living, is the reason she is faced with such a terrible situation possibly ending her life.
Oates shows archetypes throughout the story. The symbolic archetype shown is “the friendly beast” or “the tempt”. The friendly beast, of course, would be Arnold Friend; Arnold never hurts or does anything to Connie, he just tempts her by saying, “we’ll drive away, have a nice ride.” The temptation for Connie is that she wants to grow up, get away from her family and live her own life. Although, Connie is very ignorant; Connie believes her looks will get her very far in life, but what she doesn’t realize is that ignorance does not equal bliss. In The Sitting Bee Dermot McManus talks about how Connie struggles with independence and how she wants to do things on her own. McManus says “that Connie still relies on others to take her home and other things, and how
Ignorance and vanity can be good, in small amounts, but too much can lead to very unwelcome consequences. Connie, a teenage girl who can’t get enough of herself, learned this the hard way when a strange man by the name of Arnold Friend arrives at her house with the intent of taking her on a ‘date’. Instead of calling the police or locking herself in, like common sense would imagine, Connie uneasily greets Arnold from her door when he gets out of his car, instantly letting her vanity and ignorance get the best of her. Joyce Carol Oates shocks the reader with the twist ending in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” in which after hearing Arnold’s threat towards her family, Connie hands herself over to Arnold allowing him
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” tells the tale of a fifteen year old girl named Connie living in the early 1960’s who is stalked and ultimately abducted by a man who calls himself Arnold Friend. The short story is based on a true event, but has been analyzed by many literary scholars and allegedly possesses numerous underlying themes. Two of the most popular interpretations of the story are that the entire scenario is only dreamt by Connie (Rubin, 58) and that the abductor is really the devil in disguise (Easterly, 537). But the truth is that sometimes people really can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connie, a victim of terrifying circumstance will be forever changed by her interactions with Friend.
This is evidence signifying that Friend is the devil because he had a hard time saying “Christ”- the opposite of Satan. Likewise, in the story “Young Goodman Brown” Hawthorne illustrates the actions and supernatural powers to provide evidence that the old man is the devil. For example, when the man and Goodman Brown are walking along the woods the devil picks up a branch from a maple tree to use as a walking stick. It is interpreted that when the man began to strip the branch of small twigs, “The moment his fingers touched them, they became strangely withered and dried up as with a week’s sunshine”(Hawthorne 4). If this man was presumed human, he would not have this extremely inhuman capability proving mare he is the devil. Similarly, the devilish character in “The Man in the Black Suit” has an alike capability. When main character Gary goes back into the woods with his father to retrieve his bamboo fishing rod, his father notices strange patches of grass where little to his knowledge, a devilish creature once stood. As his father kneels down to examine the unique grass it was described as “...brown and curled up on itself, as if a blast of heat had charred it” (King
Children learn about the devil as a terrifying creature with red horns and goat legs. If we imagine the devil like this, then we can see these characteristics in the story. One item mentioned in the previous paragraph was the wig Arnold was wearing, which he is using to cover his horns. Also, Arnold continues to lose his balance because he cannot stand correctly. The narrator said, “He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently, his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would appear taller” (329). In this statement, we see that Arnold does not have human feet because his feet do not go in the boots completely. Later in the story, the narrator describes his feet “pointed out to the left bent at the ankle” (329). This perfectly describes goat legs, which also explains why Arnold is pretending to be human. If he can make Connie not suspicious about his true identity, then he could gain her
In Joyce Carol Oates’, “ Where are You going Where have you been,” it was a sunday morning when Arnold continues another one of his daily routines. The main girl, Connie, is a self-centered and shy girl, whose mother is always puts her in the background and makes her feel excluded. For instance, her mother says rude comments like “you think your so pretty” and “you don't see your sister using that junk” (1). Then a guy came into her life. “Where are You Going Where Have You been illustrates a man who uses charms and good looks to get young or middle aged women to satisfy himself, but with this one girl he has some trouble along the way.
The external conflict in Oate’s story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, is when Connie meets this mysterious stranger named Arnold Friend. Connie first comes across Arnold when she is hanging out with a boy named Eddie. The second time she glances at him he says, “Gonna get you, baby” (p. 7). She ignores him and continues enjoying her date with Eddie. Soon enough, when Connie’s family left for a barbeque and she stayed home alone, she heard a car pull up on the drive way. Arnold then initiates conversation with Connie and asks her if she wants to go for a ride with him. She rejects his offer because she has no idea who this “Arnold Friend” is, yet he keeps insisting, “Don’tcha wanna see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanna go for a ride?”
Oates’ use of the way Arnold looks and acts so similar to the devil, her use of the words on the car meaning something foreign and her subtle symbolism with Connie’s attire make the story’s theme of evil and manipulation stand out so much more. Connie’s clothing symbolizing