Analysis Of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

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Author Joyce Carol Oates writes about a girl named Connie during the early 1970s who has a hard time facing reality and womanhood in the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” This fifteen-year-old girl is stuck in childhood in the beginning of the story and by the end of the story she is forced into adulthood due to an experience that is almost unreal. It is hard for Connie to determine if the experience was fantasy or if it was reality. Fantasy versus reality is one of the main themes in this short story and is shown through many different elements. The elements that writer Joyce Carol Oates uses are characters and symbols to create the theme of the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Characters in the story have a major impact on the theme of fantasy versus reality. The main character Connie, is a fifteen-year-old who exhibits the confusing, often superficial behavior typical of a teenage girl facing the difficult transition
Connie, being a teenager had been oblivious to the real Arnold Friend which resulted to her getting into a terrible situation. Connie had a difficult time facing reality, so Oates used symbols to prove it to be true. This all makes readers question whether or not the terrible situation in the story really occurred or was it all a fantasy similar to a dream of Connie’s? This is unknown to readers and at the end of the story it says “ the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it (Oates 872). Connie could have been living in a fantasy world during the whole story or was she could have been living it all in

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