At first glance, Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been” seems to be the story of a typical young girl, obsessed with boys, struggling with her mother for independence and exploring her sexual identity. However, the typical story of the growing pains of youth, it is not. It is not the story of a well-adjusted teenager fighting for self-identity but instead, the story of an insecure and vulnerable young woman who uses her looks to validate her self-worth. It is the story of a girl whose own mother, in her constant criticism, further diminishes her self-esteem. In the very first paragraph of the story, Oates describes Connie looking in the mirror as she does often, to confirm she is still beautiful and her mother observing and saying “Stop Gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you’re so pretty?” (Oates 1). And while Oates continues to write: “she knew she was pretty and that was everything” it is clear, in her constant attempts to attract boys that Connie is seeking validation. She’s figured out that her looks are a weapon and that she can use them to control the people around her. …show more content…
And while she is outwardly confident, it is this false sense of control that leaves her vulnerable to a predator. The story begins with a series of normal events, outings at the mall, encounters with boys at the drive in, a story of a girl exploring her sexual identity within the confines of her safe environment.
She enjoys the rush of attracting boys and pays little attention to them as individuals, she is more interested in the feeling of validation and control that she gets from their meetings than the actual relationships themselves. Oates writes of Connie’s experiences” it was summer vacation-getting in her mother’s way and thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But All the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July.” Connie is a girl in control of her environment, until a chance meeting changes the course of her
life. While at the drive in one summer night, Connie describes a fleeting encounter with a boy in a gold colored jalopy. While their meeting seems to be unimportant, Connie describes her heart beating faster as she sees him, perhaps considering him her next conquest. Little of anything comes of this meeting except the boy calls out, “Gonna get you, baby”, a comment that seems flirtatious in the context of their meeting. At this point in the story, the reader has no idea that this is the moment that life will change for Connie. That this “boy” will shatter Connie’s illusion of control and expose her as a vulnerable and insecure young girl. One Sunday, Arnold Friend, appears, unannounced in his gold jalopy. He announces his presence with four honks, a normal, handsome young boy, showing up to take Connie for a drive. While surprised at his appearance, Connie approaches this with confidence, flirting with the young boy, controlling the situation by refusing to come out of the house. The following paragraphs are so well written with Oates describing clearly the shift in power that occurs between Connie and Arnold. Connie beginning to realize that Arnold is not a boy but a man, his persona deteriorating until he is revealed as a monster, the harmless boy becoming a man and then a predator. And Connie, the beautiful, in control young girl becoming his prey, a vulnerable girl unsafe in the safest place she has known. Slowly and with great skill, Oates scratches the surfaces of both characters, revealing so clearly that underneath, people are not always what they seem.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” focuses on two main characters, Connie and Arnold Friend. The two characters have extreme conflict throughout the short story and in the end only one wins. The literary device of characterization in the story helps to clarify the Greek and Biblical reasons for one character’s win and the other’s lose.
First of all, Connie was not happy at home. The story says that her father "was away at work most of the time," and "didn't bother talking much to them," so Connie didn't have love from him and had to find male attention somewhere else. Connie found her happiness in escaping with her friend to the drive-in restaurant and daydreaming about boys. But the happiness she found in both of these things had nothing to do with actual events; it is based on a fantasy. When she was out at the drive-in with a boy, her face gleamed "with the joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music." When she daydreamed about boys, they all "fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling mixed up with the urgent pounding of the music..."
stuffed boots; these features led her to believe he was not a teenager, but in
The overuse of biblical allusions throughout the story helps to expose the naive nature of Connie that reveals her as a victim of evil which shows that lust often transgresses on an individual’s identity. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates expressed the subjective ideas by symbolizing Arnold Friend as a devil that tempts a clueless teenage girl Connie, who wanted to experience love.
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.
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 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.
In the story “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ Connie does not have a good relationship with her relatives. Her family relationship is unhealthy. Her mother says demeaning things to her like “Stop gawking at yourself, who are you? You think you’re so pretty?” (Oates qtd. in Kirszner and Mandell, 453 ). Or
Joyce Carol Oates begins the story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by addressing Connie’s “habit of craning her neck to glace into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (316). This is interesting because when Connie’s personified death, Arnold Friend, arrives honking at her driveway, her very first instinct is to check and see how her looks. This later plays a role when Friend asks if she would like to go for a drive in his topless car where her hair will be blown around. To Connie, “gawking” (316) herself, was a form of making herself feel high and beautiful but she had two sides of doing everything, “one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home,” (317). Linda Wagner
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
Have you ever been so focused on achieving your dreams that you become unaware of your current situation? When we focus on the goals ahead of us, we fail to see the obstacles and dangers that are in front of us. In order to achieve our goals we involuntarily put ourselves in an unwanted situation. Connie, herself, struggles to achieve her goal of being a desirable girl that turns heads when she walks into the room. She becomes so set on being this girl that she doesn’t realize the danger of the situation. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates utilizes metaphors, diction, and imagery to show how Connie is in a constant tug between her reality and her dreams, and how this confines her freedoms in a world that is surrounded with malevolence.
During the teenage years they no longer want to be labeled the “child; matter of fact, they have a strong desire to rebel against the family norms and move quickly into adulthood. This transition and want for freedom can be a very powerful and frightening thing as there are evils in this world that cannot be explained. Most parents try to understand and give their teens certain freedoms, but at what expense? Joyce Oates gives us a chilly story about a teenager that wanted and craved this freedom of adulthood called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. This is a haunting story of a young girl by the name of Connie who gives us a glimpse of teenager transitioning from childhood with the need for freedom and the consequences of her actions. Connie is described as a very attractive girl who did not like her role in the family unit. She was the daughter who could not compare to her older sister and she felt her Mom showed favoritism towards her sister. Connie is your average teen who loves music, going out with friends, and she likes the attention she receives from boys. During this time, Connie is also growing into her sexuality and is obsessing with her looks as she wants and likes to be noticed by the opposite sex. Her sexual persona and need to be free will be what is fatal to her character’s life and well-being.
Oates takes us to a journey of rebellion as the protagonist sorts through self-created illusion in order to come to terms with her own sexual inexperience. Connie’s desires for attention from the opposite sex, her vanity and immaturity blind her to think of the real intentions of guys, in this case Arnold Friend. A character that many critics argue is real, yet, others argue it was created by Connie’s mind.
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
The reader goes through the process as Connie does from feelings of confusion to disturbed to fear. The story begins with Connie being a typical teenage girl, disobeying her parents instructions, and going to the drive-in to flirt with boys. This is an innocent action, and Connie is looking only for attention not anything sexual. “One night in mid-summer they came across, breathless with daring, and right away someone leaned out a car window and invited them over” (379). Connie does not realize how dangerous this could potentially be because she is just caught up in the idea of the being “where the older kids hung out” (379). She sees her identity as her physical attractiveness, so Connie uses these flirtatious nights to seek validation of this false identity. When Arnold Friend shows up at Connie’s house, she is confused but not yet scared. He is very charming at first and tells Connie she is cute. Connie thrives from this and “blushed a little....she couldn’t decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk” (381). Here, Connie is still stuck in her naive teenager mentality that this is nothing dangerous, and Arnold Friend is harmless. As the story progresses, Connie begins to realize that Arnold is not actually a teenager at all. “She could see then he wasn’t a kid, he was much older--thirty, maybe more. At this knowledge her heart