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Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938 in Lockport, New York. She started writing very young and that the age of fifteen she submitted her first novel, but it was rejected for being 'too dark';. This style of writing is common on many of her works including 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'; Oates graduated from Syracuse University and then went on to get her master's degree from the University of Wisconsin. Oates 'turned much often in her writing to everyday characters, which she often placed in situations that were both psychologically and socially terrifying.'; (Short Stories For Students 258) Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is based on a killer in the southwest names Charles 'Smitty'; Schmid was charged of rape and murder of three young girls in the fall of 1965 in Tucson, Arizona. 'Oates wrote the story after hearing Dylan's song 'Its All Over Now, Baby Blue'; Oates also has dedicated the story to Dylan which has brought about a fair amount of mystery and speculation. (Joyce Carol Oates, Raines)
Connie, a fifteen year old girl who likes to go off and have fun with her friends, meet and dream about boys and the idea of a perfect life and relationship is the main target of a clever malicious stalker, a man who intends to kidnap, rape and murder her. 'She (Connie) is caught between her roles as a daughter, friend, sister, and object of sexual desire uncertain of which one represents the real her.'; (Short Stories For Students 259) Creighton writes 'Oates captures so well the viciousness, cheapness and narcissism of life for Connie and her friends who have nothing better to do than to stroll up and down a shopping center plaza looking for excitement.'; Connie is blind to the real world which surrounds her and ironically enough, it leads to her death. She opens up herself too much to life and believes nothing will ever hurt her. The music and movies she enjoys are her ideals of how her life will be for her in the future.
Connie is first aware of Arnold Friend when she is out on a date and she noticed a 'a boy with black hair and a gold 'jalopy'-a beat up sports car- staring at her.'; (White) Death and the Maiden was the original name for this story. Oates chose that to 'allocate the fatal attraction of death (or the devil) for a young woman who is seduced b...
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...e, anytime, danger can come around. We all have sympathy for Connie in the fact that she cannot see what is going to happen to her, and Arnold Friend takes on the roll of a person we have all learned to hate. We can now see the greater meaning of 'it can happen to anyone';.
Sources Cited
Creighton, Joanne V. Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 19. Pgs. 348-51. Gale Research Company. Detroit, Michigan. 1981.
Collins, Stephanie. Devilish Qualities Of Friend Apr. 24, 1998. Apr. 19, 1999. Online
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Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? An Introduction To Literature Eleventh Edition. Longman Publishing New York. 1997.
Piwinski, David J. Explicator Volume 49, Number 3, Spring 1991. Heldreff Publishing. Washington, DC. 1991.
Raines, Linda F. Joyce Carol Oates Online Posting. 1996. Apr. 22, 1999.
Short Stories for Students. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Volume 1. Pgs. 257-276. Gale Publishing, Detroit Michigan. 1997.
White, Terry. Allegoric Evil, Existential Choice In O'Connor, Oates, and Styron Pittsburgh State University 1993. April 23 1999. Expanded Abstracts.
Arnold Friend takes advantage of Connie’s teenage innocence for something of a much more sinister purpose. Connie thought she had it all figured out until Arnold Friend came into her life and up her driveway on one summer, Sunday afternoon and made her realize how big and scary the world can be. Arnold embodies everything that Connie has dreamed about in a boy, but is in the most malevolent form of Connie’s dream boy. She always wanted to get away from her family because she has always felt as if she didn’t belong and Arnold can make this possible just in the most predatory way. She always thought sex would be sweet (and consensual) and that she would be in charge of how it progressed, Arnold strips her of the authority she’s held in any other encounter with a boy. The moral of the story is always be careful what you wish
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
Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. By Frank Madden. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 436-48. Print.
* Wegs, Joyce M. "'Don't You Know Who I Am?' The Grotesque in Oates' 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'" Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Ed. Linda W. Wagner. Boston: G. K. Hall 1979.
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.
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.
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates wants to show a more intellectual and symbolic meaning in this short story. Oates has many symbolic archetypes throughout the short story along with an allegory. Oates uses these elements in her story by the selection of detail and word choice used. Oates does this because she wants to teach her audience a moral lesson.
In the short story, Connie is a young, naïve, sassy, little girl who hates her mom and sister. According to Oates, “Connie wished her mother was dead” (324). Connie enjoys going out with her friends and going to a drive-in restaurant where the older kids hang out. Connie is innocent, but thinks about love and sex. She is desperate to appeal to boys and succeeds at it when a boy with shaggy black hair says to her, “Gonna get you, baby” (325). Her encounter with this boy will change her life forever, because he is the antagonist that influences Connie’s loss of innocence. On a Sunday afternoon, the boy, Arnold Friend, visits Connie and asks her to come for a ride, which she declines. But, Arnold Friend won’t take “no” for an answer and threatens to go in the house. For example when Connie says she will call the cops, Arnold says “Soon as you touch the phone I don’t need to keep my promise and come inside”
Arnold Friend’s layers of deception. Connie’s blindness is the pretext of her loss of innocence
Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" written in the late sixties, reveals several explanations of its plot. The story revolves around a young girl being seduced, kidnapped, raped and then killed. The story is purposely vague and that may lead to different interpretations. Teenage sex is one way to look at it while drug use or the eerie thought that something supernatural may be happening may be another. The story combines elements of what everyone may have experienced as an adolescent mixed with the unexpected dangers of vanity, drugs, music and trust at an early age. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to choose what the real meaning of this story is. At one point or another one has encountered, either through personal experience or through observation, a teenager who believes that the world is plotting against them. The angst of older siblings, peer pressure set upon them by their friends, the need for individualism, and the false pretense that at fifteen years of age, they are grown are all factors which affect the main character in this story.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Celestial Timepiece. July 2007. U of San Francisco. 15 Mar. 2008.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Backpack Literature. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Gale Kozikowski, Stan. " The Wishes and Dreams Our Hearts Make in Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'. " Journal of the Short Story in English. 33 (Autumn 1999): 89-103.
Abrams, MH, et al. Eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.