Analysis Of The Beauty And The Beast

The Beauty and the Beast: Criticisms of External and Internal Influences in Literature

In 1965, Bob Dylan released an album to the public titled Bringing it all Back Home and within, it contained one of his more popular songs entitled “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (USF P:7). In the Seagull Reader, it states the dedication ‘for Bob Dylan’ that Joyce Carol Oates placed before the short story Where are you Going, Where have you Been? and many have wondered why (Oates 337). This short story is based upon a realistic situation in Tucson, Arizona about a serial killer who seduced and murdered teenaged girls, much like Arnold Friend was in the process of doing so with Connie, our main character (336). In an interview, Oates stated when asked about

Barstow explains, “Connie shuts the door on childhood. Oates seems to suggest that if either one of them had made the effort to communicate, Connie might have remained safely a child until old enough to choose the future,” (P:6). This quote is particularly interesting because it is referencing directly to Connie’s childhood and bringing in that nurturing aspect that is being studied. Barstow is directly explaining that because her and her mother did not communicate, Connie is led to grow out of her childhood stage at a younger age, yet she is still very immature and vain in many ways and is not ready to grow out of it yet. Throughout the story of Where are you Going… Connie is caught in between that middle stage of childhood and adult and she thinks she has got life all figured out, but in reality, her actions of vanity and disobeying her parents prove otherwise. By over-nurturing and not communicating with her child more, Connie’s mother has provided this framework for her to be an ‘adult-child’ therefore causing her to be vain make wrong decisions; Connie wasn’t born this way, it was the negative over-nurturing that made her the way she

Oates write this story with a purpose, as all short stories are written, yet she forces the reader to think of the ‘what ifs’ for each character. If Connie was not vain because of her family, she would not have made herself pretty to simply eat with her friends at the drive in restaurant. If Friend was not swayed at a young age that aggressive sexual actions and unsolicited pursuing are considered normal, he would not have been at that diner looking for a victim. No matter how much one thinks they make decisions for themselves, external and internal factors will always subconsciously shape the actions of an individual, and they will change the course of ones’