In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Joyce Carol Oates, the author, depicts the suspenseful story of a young girl who is abducted and later murdered. The story starts out innocently enough, the young girl, Connie, is sneaking off with her to friend to go hang out with boys just like any teenager might do. It is not until the next day, when Connie stays at home that the nightmare she is about to experience begins. Oates reveals the character of antagonist Arnold Friend, through her use of dialogue, physical description, and contrast between fantasy and reality. Music is a very prevalent theme in this short story. Throughout the entire story, there is a sense of surrealism. Connie often is not quite sure if what is …show more content…
happening is physically going on in front of her or whether she is making it all up as a fantasy in her own head.
Music acts as a bridge between the physical world, where she is constantly fighting with her parents and sister, to a fantasy world where she is in control of whatever happens. Oates takes this even further though portraying the incident with Arnold Friend as neither quite reality nor fantasy. Oates fills Connie’s head with ideas taken from the songs on the radio about love and boys and in general just being a teenager. When she finds herself in a situation with Arnold, her knowledge about attraction fails her. No longer is it the romantic words that are in her favorite song but instead a creepy old man looking at her like prey. **analyze song lyrics??** Arnold demonstrates a sort of omniscient presence in the story by knowing every little detail of Connie’s life, including what her family was wearing that day when they were at the barbeque. He seemed to know about all of her family members, not just her mother, father, and sister. He also asked about one of her neighbors. Knowing all this stuff makes …show more content…
Arnold seem powerful and in control. He uses his stalking to intimidate Connie. At one point, he glances off and appears to be looking into her aunt’s backyard, at her family having the barbeque. Arnold knows he is frightening Connie and uses this to his advantage. With Arnold seemingly knowing every little detail about her, Connie is caught up in a whirlwind of whether or not this terrifying experience was reality or a nightmare. It is almost unreal how much Arnold knows, and Connie goes lightheaded and becomes dizzy, further leading to a feeling that the events occurring were not real. Arnold and his friend’s appearance are off-putting to Connie the moment she sees them.
Whether it is his car, a bright color, almost painful to look at, with outdated phrases and words painted on the side (like someone who is just one step behind pop culture) or the fact that he cannot walk straight in his boots alarms her. His friend, Ellie, looks like “a baby faced forty year old”, another alarming fact. Everything about Arnold and his friend’s physical appearance is slightly off-putting. There is something subtly strange about him. His car is a great example of this. It is a bright color that “was almost painful to the eyes” and had the name Arnold Friend painted on the side. Connie thought it was a bit odd to have a name written on the side of a car, as long as a phrase that had already gone out of style. Arnold was drunk during their altercation, as he could not seem to hold himself up and walk straight. Besides this, he also lined his boots with tin cans and paper to make himself appear taller. He had a wig-like hairdo and a face that looked like it was plastered on with makeup. Everything about Arnold Friend was fake and Connie realized this, just not in
time. The way Arnold talks sets off another red flag and feeling of suspense. He always appears to be searching for just the right phrase and whatever he says is a little bit off. He tells Connie that he is eighteen years old, yet he doesn’t seem to know any of the youthful sayings or slang of the time. Instead, he knows what used to be cool and appears to be stuck in the past. Oates uses dialogue in order to push the reader and the main character into suspense. With the way Arnold Friend talks and uses sickeningly sweet terms of endearment and is just behind on the latest phrases and sayings, Oates portrays a disturbing aura. Something is just not quite right about Arnold Friend.
...eft the house. The room is filled with "hard, fast, shrieking songs she [sings] along with" and her heart begins beating quickly. Arnold suddenly pulls in to the driveway, his radio tuned to the same radio station. The music behind Arnold is "perpetual" and symbolizes the danger that Connie has brought upon herself. The reader is put off by Connie's wanton and careless romp at the beginning of the story and, subconsciously, the reintroduction of fast music makes him uneasy again.
Arnold Friend, one of the two main characters in the short story “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been” written by Joyce Carol Oates, is looked upon as a controversial character. Friend has many distinct character traits, but it is often argued whether those traits are good or bad. Some view Friend as a savior figure, while others see him as a satanic representation. Throughout the story, Oates uses many symbols to convey Friend’s character. Arnold Friend is portrayed as a savior through the symbolic usage of music, cars, and clothing.
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean, don't fool around," he said, shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig…” (Oates 6). Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” highlights an altercation, meeting, conflict and dispute between a teenage girl, named Connie, and a psychotic rapist named Arnold Friend. Throughout their altercation, Arnold Friend tempts and encourages Connie to get in the car with him and lead her to a variety of possible dangerous situations, one of which includes her getting raped . There is no doubt that Joyce Carol Oates’ uses Arnold Friend in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” to symbolize the Devil and embody all of the evil and sinister forces that are present in our world. This becomes apparent when the reader focuses on how deranged Arnold Friend is and begins to
A theme that runs through this story is that music seems to be the bridge from the real world into Connie's fantasy world. She doesn't know what she wants, but it's got something to do with "the music that made everything so good." When Arnold Friend drove up the driveway, Connie was listening to music, "bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy." She soon discovered that he was playing the same music in his car. This is not a coincidence; I think it makes a connection in the back of Connie's mind. And, the story says that it seemed to Connie like Arnold "had come from nowhere," and "belonged nowhere," and that everything about him "was only half real."
By doing that, it also gave Arnold Friend a hint that she was easy to manipulate. Then, concerning the dialogue element, the explanation for both the movie and the short-story will be the same since I use the passage between Arnold Friend and Connie at her house. Since Connie is responding so naively at the very beginning of their conversation, it is almost certain that Arnold would succeed to manipulate her. In fact, the biggest mistake she made was to actually get out of the house and start the conversation with him: "She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door, her bare toes curling down off the step" (314). Through this action, it already gave Arnold Friend the idea that she is innocent and vulnerable; the only thing left was to seduce her with his words. Finally, I believe the movie would better suits the theme because we can visually observe how innocent she is with her mimics, her behaviour, her clothing. Although Oates’ short-story is very descriptive, the message behind this story doesn’t have the same effect on us than the
There are many notorious characters in literature, all with their own menacing qualities and depraved actions. None, however, have struck such a devastatingly creepy chord as Arnold Friend of Joyce Carol Oates "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Seducer of young girls and embodiment of Lucifer, Arnold Friend is anything but a friend. Arnold Friend is presented through both actions and appearances, and these combine to diminish his likeability, while adding to his devilish persona. Although Arnold Friend's traits are never stated outright, they are presented through his speech and interaction with other characters, which ultimately creates a more impacting effect and lasting impression.
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.
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
A mysterious car pulled into Connie’s driveway and the driver proceeds to get out of his vehicle, showing that he belonged there, not recognizing the car Connie opens the door to her house and leans out it. “She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door,” (2). Without even knowing who or why this person has come to her house, Connie opens her door and leans out to possible talk to the driver, who would turn out to be Arnold Friend and wants to take her on a “date”. Connie’s ignorance towards Arnold and his arrival almost immediately puts her in a vulnerable state without her even realizing it, this vulnerability would be the first event to foreshadow Connie’s inevitable kidnapping. After greeting and talking to Arnold for a little, he proceeds to ask Connie if she wants to go for a ride in his car. Instead of turning down the offer since she barely, if at all, knew Arnold, Connie somewhat debates it. “Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over her shoulder,” (3). Though she lacks any information about Arnold, Connie kind of debates taking up his offer to go for a ride, further letting her ignorance towards the entire situation usher her into an even more vulnerable
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.
When approached by Arnold Friend at first, she was skeptical but was still charmed by him. As she began to feel uneasy, Connie could have used her intuition to realize that he was trouble. Once she had been engaged by Arnold, her life was over. The influences on Connie and her lack of instilled reasoning led to her down fall. Her family’s fragmented nature was echoed in her actions; consequently, she was unable to communicate with her parents, and she was never was able to learn anything of significance. She felt abandoned and rejected, because no one took the initiative to teach her how to make good decisions. Connie was unable to mature until she was faced with death and self sacrifice. In the end, her situation made it difficult for her to think and reason beyond the position she was in. By not being able apply insight, she fell into Arnold Friends lure. Misguidance by the parents strongly contributed to Connie’s
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
Rubin attempts to convey the idea that Connie falls asleep in the sun and has a daydream in which her “…intense desire for total sexual experience runs headlong into her innate fear…” (58); and aspects of the story do seem dream like - for instance the way in which the boys in Connie’s daydreams “…dissolved into a single face…” (210), but the supposition that the entire episode is a dream does not ring true. There are many instances in which Connie perceives the frightening truth quite clearly; she is able to identify the many separate elements of Friend’s persona - “… that slippery friendly smile of his… [and] the singsong way he talked…” (214). But because of the lack of attachment with her own family, and her limited experience in relating deeply to others, “…all of these things did not come together” (214) and Connie is unable to recognize the real danger that Arnold Friend poses until it is too late.
Connie had two sides to her character. To begin with, Connie possesses distinctive personas relying upon the setting she ends up in; at home she is one individual, with her companions she is another. Moreover Arnold Friend's personality is conflicted. He introduces himself as an adolescent kid, yet over the span of the story it turns out to be evident that his outward character is a façade concealing something substantially more evil and the other is he can be viewed as the fiend incarnate. Then again Arnold can be interpreted as only an invention of Connie's creative
When Arnold and Connie’s eyes meet inadvertently, Connie sees “a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold” (Oates 371). To Connie, this was by pure chance and a pure stranger. To Arnold, Connie is his next victim. On the very next day, Arnold shows up at Connie’s house while her parents and sister are away at a family barbeque. Arnold entices her to go for a ride in his car by the use of appealing music and smooth conversation. However, taking an innocent girl for a ride in his car was the last of his intentions. Because of Connie’s lack of experience, curiosity, and inability to withstand peer pressure she succumbs to Arnold’s predatory hands. On that dreadful day, Connie lost her innocence and her