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Where are you going, where have you been? joyce carol oates summary
Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
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Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? In Joyce Carol Oates short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? the reader is immediately introduced to the main character, Connie; a young girl who obsesses over herself and puts little value on her family or loved ones. Throughout the story readers are also introduced to a man named Arnold Friend. Oates uses this character to reveal to readers the true psychological flaws of Connie that are most likely a result of the lack of a male figure in her life. Readers are also introduced to a man by the name of Arnold Friend. The story displays Arnold friend as a “stalker,” because prior to developing a friendship with Connie, he already knows too much about her personal life. …show more content…
Oates makes it very clear that Connie is very concerned about her looks and associates all hope and happiness with the way she looks and the attention she will receive because of what she wears and how she acts. Within the first sentence of the short story, Oates introduces readers to Connie by saying, “Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people 's faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates). This quote displays Connie 's longing for self perfection. Readers can infer that because Connie is constantly being put down by her family, she feels that she needs to look elsewhere for attention, and resorts to perfection as a way to get attention from other people, particularly older boys. Connies underdeveloped psyche also plays a role in this. A major reason for Connie 's promiscuous actions is her distant relationship with her …show more content…
Throughout the story, Arnold Friend is portrayed by Oates as a creepy, provocative stalker. When Friend is first brought to the attention of the reader, it is when Connie is out with friends. As she walks by Friend’s car, he “wags a finger” and says “Gonna get you, baby.” This also displays how underdeveloped Connie 's psyche is. This first notion sent by Arnold Friend should have startled Connie, but she payed no attention to it, she was too concerned with the moment of attention she was receiving from Eddie and all the people around her. Arnold Friend comes to Connie 's home, knowing she was alone and attempts to persuade her to get into his car to go for a ride. This is the first time Connie has ever talked to Arnold Friend, but he already knows everything about her. He knows where she lives, where her parents are, who her friends are, and what her interest are. Connie questions how he knows all of her personal information and he replies with “I know your name and all about you, lots of things. I took a special interest in you, such a pretty young girl, and found out all about you” (Oates). This quote is a clear indication that Arnold Friend is a threatening, menacing stalker. All of these scenarios show Arnold friends underdeveloped psyche. He is somewhere around thirty years old, and does not know what is right and what is wrong. From Oates description of Arnold Friend and his
Oates uses a great number of symbols in her short story "Where are you going? Where have you been? to create an aura of unease and Devilishness. Her principal symbols are Arnold Friend, his disguise, and the music Connie listens to. Oates' use of symbolism and Biblical allusions to Satan force the reader to raise an eyebrow to the character of Arnold Friend and the doomed future of Connie.
It is mentioned multiple times that Arnold knows “‘lots of things’” (Oates 3). Not only does he know Connie, but he is able to list off a number of kids even though he himself is not from around there. Arnold is even able to call Connie on her bluff and confidently state that Connie’s family will not be coming back for her, and that they are at “‘Aunt Tillie’s sitting around drinking’” (Oates 6). The only way Arnold would be able to know exactly where and what Connie’s family is doing would be that he has supernatural powers— abilities that are commonly associated with the Devil. This theory is even more feasible when you realize that author stated that “‘Arnold Friend is a fantastic figure: he is Death, he is the 'elf-knight' of the ballads, he is the Imagination, he is a Dream, he is a Lover, a Demon, and all that.’” (Coulthard
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.
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
stuffed boots; these features led her to believe he was not a teenager, but in
Arnold Friend imposes a devilish and menacing pressure upon Connie, who ultimate gives in, like a maiden entranced by a vampire's gaze. His appearance, sayings, and doing all combine to form a terrifying character that seems both reasonable and unlikely at the same time. There are people like Arnold Friend out there, not as incoherently assembled, and still he seems an extraordinary case of stalker. A small and even insignificant aside about his name, Arnold Friend, is that with the R's his name would read A'nold F'iend, or "An Old Fiend" i.e. the devil. But, regardless, Arnold Friend is very precisely portrayed as a corrupter of youths and a deflowerer of virgins. Without his useless sweet-nothings or his strange balance problem, he would come across less dangerous and alluring.
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
Connie is only concerned about her physical appearance. She can be described as being narcissistic because "she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirror or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right" (Oates 148). Connie wants her life to be different from everyone else's in her family. She thinks because she is prettier, she is entitled to much more. She wants to live the "perfect life" in which she finds the right boy, marries him, and lives happily ever after. This expectation is nothing less than impossible because she has not experienced love or anything like it. She has only been subjected to a fantasy world where everything is seemingly perfect. This is illustrated in the story when Connie is thinking about her previous encounters with boys: "Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs" (151).
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...
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
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”
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.
thinks they would ever come face to face with the Devil. Like Connie from the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, by Joyce Carol Oates. Connie is a thirteen-year-old girl that is confronted by the Devil, otherwise known as Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend shows he is the Devil by his false appearance, cooked boots, and mask-like face. Arnold also has abilities like visions and drawing symbols in the air. When Connie opens the door, she is almost possessed or under a trance by Arnold. This demonstrates the control he has over people. Arnold Friend is portrayed as the Devil in the short story “Where Are You Going,