Where Are You Going, Where have you been?

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Connie’s Decision Nobody really knows what the future holds. We all live day by day wondering what God’s will is for our lives. Yet we carry on and make decisions that may or may not shape what our lives turn out to be. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where are you going, Where have you been?,” we meet Connie, a fifteen year old beautiful girl. Connie like most teenagers is a little boy crazy and at times rebellious. She and some girlfriends would get together and go to a local drive-in restaurant where older kids would hang out. (153) One night at this drive-in a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible caught Connie’s eye. (154) Connie had never seen him before. He made the sly statement of “Gonna get you, baby,” and she just ignored him and walked on. (154) Little did Connie know he was speaking the truth. In a very short period of time Connie was about to make the biggest decision of her life, literally. Connie was at home alone one day sitting in her room listening to music. Her mother, father and sister were out to a barbeque. An unfamiliar car pulled up in the driveway and Connie at first was worried about how she looked. This was the least of her troubles. When Connie got to the front door she was faced with two men. The driver whom we come to know as Arnold Friend and the passenger whose name was Ellie Oscar. Arnold comes off at first as kind of strange yet nice. He asks Connie, “You wanta come for a ride?” (...

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