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The importance of teen literature
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Connie, the main character in Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been" is a fifteen-year-old girl, just realizing her beauty. It is summer vacation, and she is spending her time either with boys or daydreaming about them. Connie is a typical teenage girl with a desperate need for independence. She does not get along with her mother, and her father is seldom around. He works a great deal of the time, and when he comes home, he likes to eat and go to bed. Connie has a girlfriend who she enjoys going to the mall with. While at the mall, the girls like to meet boys and watch movies. It is a place where the girls can express themselves in a way different from the ways in which they portray themselves at home. The story's climax begins the day after one of Connie's trips to the mall. Her family has gone to a barbecue across town, and she is alone in the house. The events of the story lead up to a terrifying confrontation and abduction of Connie by one of the boys' she had met the night before. She had never spoken with the boy before, but she did enjoy the ways he had looked at her. In reading "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" readers may question Connie's judgment at times and ask whether or not her actions contribute to the troubles Connie is forced to endure at the end of the story. Connie can be labeled as an average teenage girl: vulnerable, carefree, desirous, and curious. She has just discovered the power of her own beauty, but hasn't yet realized that power, in any form, must be controlled. Connie has long, dark blond hair. She is petite and seems confident in her looks, yet "everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home" (par. 5). Connie loves to h... ... middle of paper ... ...nie receives little attention at home and therefore craves attention from boys. Teenagers at Connie's age search for connections and companionship while evolving into young adults, discovering the powers of independence. Connie is searching for the good in Arnold as she is enjoying the attention he gives her. It is possible that in this state of wonder, Connie may not realize she is in danger until control over the situation is lost. Readers are left waiting for Connie to be rescued, fighting for her to be safe. One would like to think that she should have and could have gotten out of the situation had she not have been so naïve. However, the fear and anxiety Joyce Carol Oates portrays through Connie's character leaves Connie unable to protect herself from harm. Although this may seem unreasonable, could you be absolutely sure of what you would do in such a situation?
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story that is about a fifteen year old pretty teenager named Connie, who does not get along with her mother and is irritated by her sister. Her sister can do no wrong in her mother's eyes while she is constantly getting criticized. Connie enjoys listening to music, watching movies, and spends a lot of time going out with her best friend and meeting boys. Until one day, a creepy guy, she had seen out one night shows up in her driveway when her family is out. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend and insists that Connie go for a ride with him and threatens to harm her family if she doesn't. In the story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates portrays Arnold Friend as a rapist; he creates the climax of the story in which Connie is taken from her home and family, by him through violent means.
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” the main character Connie is determined to appear and act older than her adolescent age. She focuses the majority of her attention on presenting the most mature version of herself for the boys and girls
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
Connie's character plays a big role in what ultimately happens to her. Connie is a vain girl that thinks the way you look is everything. She plays the stereotypical part for girls in today's society. She thinks that as long as you are pretty and dress a certain way then you are everything. This comes across when Oates writes "Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June because she was prettier" (980). By flaunting her looks she could easily give a guy like Arnold Friend perverted ideas about her. It could make them see her as easy, which he did.
A mysterious car pulled into Connie’s driveway and the driver proceeds to get out of his vehicle, showing that he belonged there, not recognizing the car Connie opens the door to her house and leans out it. “She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door,” (2). Without even knowing who or why this person has come to her house, Connie opens her door and leans out to possible talk to the driver, who would turn out to be Arnold Friend and wants to take her on a “date”. Connie’s ignorance towards Arnold and his arrival almost immediately puts her in a vulnerable state without her even realizing it, this vulnerability would be the first event to foreshadow Connie’s inevitable kidnapping. After greeting and talking to Arnold for a little, he proceeds to ask Connie if she wants to go for a ride in his car. Instead of turning down the offer since she barely, if at all, knew Arnold, Connie somewhat debates it. “Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over her shoulder,” (3). Though she lacks any information about Arnold, Connie kind of debates taking up his offer to go for a ride, further letting her ignorance towards the entire situation usher her into an even more vulnerable
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is about a teenage girl named Connie, that tell us about her life who has no guidance in life, because her family has not provided any moral support to help through her teenage life. She only knows about popular culture and not the consequences that comes with it. Without proper direction to face her problems. There are different types of conflict in this story.
“In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, the story revolves around a 15 year old girl named Connie. She tells us in the beginning about how her relationship with her mother and the rest of her family is, and how they interact with each other. It focuses on this girl and her activities of being defiant. She goes out with her friends on a weekly basis and continues to hang out with guys that she interacts with when she’s out, and sees this guy in his car that left an impression on her. Whenever her family leaves for the day to go to a barbecue, that guy comes to her house, and she ends up terrified of him. In the end, she is not herself and walks into something that is different in her eyes, like a place she had never seen before. In this story, I think there are many different ways to interpret what is happening and what is being said. What I read was a story of a girl who lost her way and a man, somewhat resembling the devil shows up to her door and coerces her into leaving her old life behind.
Connie is revealed to be immature and vain from the beginning. She has a “quick nervous giggling habit” of craning her neck to glance into mirrors and checking other people's faces to see if her own face is fine (Oates 584). She is illustrated as having a two-sided personality. She smirks and laughs “a cynical and drawling laugh” at home, but she is high-pitched and nervous everywhere else, and speaks in a “high, breathless, amused voice” that has people doubt her sinc...
She is relevant to readers because of her precociousness; the reader understands her conflict in finding independence and sexual desires. The author represents her as the ‘victim’ of the story but not as a victim who suffers from violent abuse. Oates portrays her as a victim of mind-manipulation from the strange guy standing in her driveway. Arnold’s character is not relatable to the readers because he is an unordinary character, a psychopath, and a supernatural human being. In contrast to Connie's deep and emotional character, Arnold identity is not clear, and the reader isn’t provided with a background story similar to Connie’s. As the story goes on, it is obvious that he’s not the person he pretends to be. He is much older that he says he is. His intentions could be interpreted as a rapist and even a
Arnold threatens Connie, as well as her family on numerous occasions throughout the story. These threats indicate that something terrible will happen to Connie, hinting that Arnold will kill Connie, if she refuses to obey his demands. To keep Connie from calling for help, Arnold says, “Soon as you touch the phone I don’t need to keep my promise and can come inside. You won’t want that” (Oates). Arnold continues to threaten Connie by saying, “If you don’t come out we’re gonna wait till your people come home and then they’re all going to get it” (Oates). Along with verbal threats, the language used to describe Connie being attacked suggests that she dies in the story. Connie is described as being violently attacked by Arnold Friend. The irregular and panicked breathing of Connie represents Arnold repeatedly stabbing her while she attempts to call for help. Despite Connie’s poor relationship with her mother, she still cries out for her, proving that Connie is in a great deal of danger. It is described that Connie, “Began to scream into the phone… She cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness” (Oates). Another indication that alludes to Connie’s death is when Connie begins to accept her fate shortly after being attacked. Connie comes to a realization that she may not see her family again. She understands that she is dying and accepts the fact that she will never sleep in her own bed again. Connie’s wet blouse corresponds to the stabbing; representing the blood that has began to seep through her clothing. Oates shares, “She thought, I’m not going to see my mother again. She thought, I’m not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.” In addition to the attack on Connie and
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is told from the point of view of a girl with “long dark blond hair that drew anyone’s eye to it” named Connie. Connie was a very pretty fifteen year old girl, which loved to go out with her friends and meet new people. Laura’s, the best friend of Connie, father “drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie”. It became a lifestyle for Connie which eventually became a problem being that she met a suspicious
Arnold’s explicit sexual images of them two together causes Connie to collapse near the phone and yell for her mother; not her friends or the boys she has met, but her own mother who she thought she hated. Her grief is a product of her own loss of innocence and her fear of who she is during the last moments of her life. Connie has been living a fantasy for so long that she cries for her mother and when she does not come to aid, she becomes alienated from herself as a person. This causes Connie to question if she belongs to herself or someone else, which demonstrates her submissiveness to Arnold’s
Connie has the need to be viewed as older and as more mature than she really is, all the while still displaying childlike behavior. She shows this childlike behavior by “craning her neck to glance in mirrors [and] checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates 323). This shows that Connie is very insecure and needs other people’s approval. Although on one side she is very childish, on the other side she has a strong desire to be treated like an adult. This longing for adulthood is part of her coming of age, and is demonstrated by her going out to “bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant[s]” and meeting boys, staying out with those boys for three hours at a time, and lying to her parents about where she has been and who she has been with (Oates 325, 326). “Everything about her ha[s] two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 324). Even her physical movements represent her two-sided nature: “her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearin...
Connie’s clothes and infatuation with her own beauty symbolize her lack of maturity or knowing her true self, which in the end enables her to be manipulated by Arnold Friend. Connie was enamored with her own beauty; in the beginning of the story Oates states that Connie “knew
"Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right" (1). This quote shows the reader an astonishing truth about Connie. It shows her true insecurity that is rarely demonstrated to the outside world. Although she does not necessarily show this to the average bystander, by taking a closer look at her premature idea of acceptance, it also shows her constant yearn for approval from others to help boost her ego. At only the young age of fifteen, she is already attempting to prove her maturity and show that she can be independent. She does this by showing off her sexuality and strutting around. By showing off her