The reality of life is that it is fair to no one. This idea is expressed in both Willa Cather's "Paul's Case" and Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". Cather dives into the life of the young teenager, Paul, who does not enjoy his life at all. He loathes his father and his home, so he goes on the run to get away from it all to try and live a better life. However, his fantasy is broken once life does not go his way, so he ends up committing suicide in order to escape his fate. Oates crafts a similar story in which the main character, Connie, faces the trouble of kidnapping by the sinister character Arnold Friend. Connie wishes for the threat to not be sincere, but the reality of her situation caves down on her and she …show more content…
Paul was too scared to face his problems at home, so he decided to go on the run and try to live a life away from it. However, once he found out his dad was actually searching for him, he became scared because he did not want to end up back in the hands of Cordelia Street. Paul's uneasiness to accept that his dad was searching for him was because of his longing to avoid the life of Cordelia Street. This fear of accepting reality as a way to get around the truth is evident in the main character, Connie, from "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". In an article written by Joyce Wegs, she describes how "Connie's fear drives her into a grotesque separation of mind from body" when she is confronted by Arnold Friend (Wegs 5). A huge amount of terror comes over Connie when she has her encounter with Arnold Friend, so much that she cannot even think straight after. She is overcome with the fear of facing that horrible man to the point where she just gives up and succumbs to him. This great terror of coming face to face with Arnold is driven by her wish to leave behind the truth of her
In fact, the Misfit regardless of the grandmother’s request and persuasion, and let her saw and listened her family by killed in the woods one by one. That is very cruel for a grand woman that her son and grandson died before her. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” Arnold Friend tried to attract Connie for many ways: be cool, a sunglasses, faded jeans, and boots; Tall and strong, a tousled hair, and a rock star style; A graffiti car, a despised by his friend, a very fashionable radio. That is a dangerous boy for the normal people, but very charming to a fifteen rebellious girl; Arnold Friend is very smart because he knew what she likes. He used a very
In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” written by Joyce Carol Oats, the writer includes a very interesting character. One of the main characters, Arnold Friend, is a dynamic character due to the sudden changes of this physical appearance and personality. At first he seems charming and a little on the sweet side, but then his dark side starts to show as the story progresses. He first appears when Connie abandons her friend to go with a boy named Eddie. Arnold is seen in his gold convertible Jalopy, which is the first sign that he wants to be alluring. His first words in the story are "Gonna get you, baby" this foreshadows his intentions when it comes to Connie
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” As Marta Kagan says, “Listen to your heart above all other voices.” This quote helps build on the main events in the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by creating suspense through the characters Connie and Arnold. Along with the warning signs of Arnold through foreshadowing and dialogue. The author uses foreshadowing to give the reader a little insight into how Arnold acts when Connie walks by his car with another guy. “It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold.
"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
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is told from the point of view of a girl with “long dark blond hair that drew anyone’s eye to it” named Connie. Connie was a very pretty fifteen year old girl, which loved to go out with her friends and meet new people. Laura’s, the best friend of Connie, father “drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie”. It became a lifestyle for Connie which eventually became a problem being that she met a suspicious
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.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story that is about a fifteen year old pretty teenager named Connie, who does not get along with her mother and is irritated by her sister. Her sister can do no wrong in her mother's eyes while she is constantly getting criticized. Connie enjoys listening to music, watching movies, and spends a lot of time going out with her best friend and meeting boys. Until one day, a creepy guy, she had seen out one night shows up in her driveway when her family is out. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend and insists that Connie go for a ride with him and threatens to harm her family if she doesn't. In the story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates portrays Arnold Friend as a rapist; he creates the climax of the story in which Connie is taken from her home and family, by him through violent means.
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie is a normal teenage girl who is approached outside her home by a guy named Arnold Friend who threatens to harm her, and she obeys, if she does not get in the car with him. Connie is the main character in this story who teaches us that sometimes we might search for adult independence too early before we are actually ready to be independent and on our own. Connie is so focused on her appearance that she works hard to create a mature and attractive adult persona that will get her attention from guys. This search for independence conflicts with Connie’s relationship with her family and their protection of her. Connie’s insecurity and low self-esteem is triggered by her fear of intimacy. Connie confuses having the attention of men with actually having them pursue her in a sexual way.
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.
"I mean, anybody can break through a screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to, anybody at all, and specially Arnold Friend.” (Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been, Joyce Carol Oates, pg. 8) Oates manages to make the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” a true horror, because it is relatable. The story leads us through the life of Connie until she encounters Arnold Friend and Ellie Oscar, who pressures Connie into leave her home and leaving thus leading to her murder. Throughout the story we have three main characters: Connie, Arnold Friend, and Ellie Oscar. We relate to Connie, we know people like Arnold Friend exist, and we could be Ellie Oscar.
She immediately trusts him because they simply like the same radio station. The young girl has proven throughout the story that she is curious about sex. The reader also learns that she loves attention and Connie initially finds the attention that she is receiving by Friend to be rather flattering and the fact that she thinks he’s an older boy intrigues even more. Her fate though, seems to fit the extremist world in which she inhabits. A habitat where women are viewed by men as objects of beauty for their consumption. Connie later realizes that something is odd about Arnold. She notices that the slogans on his car are outdated. She notices his painted face, his wig, and his boots. Susan Nyikos was another writer that wrote an analysis on Where are you going, where have you been. She suggested that the reason Connie realized this was because he was only a figment of her imagination and that she had never awaken from her nap. Nyikos also noted that another critic stated that Arnold Friend was the devil and that’s what explained the hooves hidden by the boots. What Susan mainly argued was that “Like many of Oates's stories, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is based on real events—the story of a "tabloid psychopath known as 'The Pied Piper of Tucson'" whose specialty was the seduction and occasional murder of teen-aged girls,"
Joyce Carol Oates is known for stories that have an everlasting effect on readers. Oates writing style was explained best herself, “I would like to create the physiological and emotional equivalent of an experience, so completely and in such exhaustive detail, that anyone who reads it sympathetically will have experienced that event in his mind” (Joslin 372). Oates’ short story Where are You going, Where have you been? perfectly fits the description of her work by placing the protagonist of the story Connie in a very uncomfortable situation with the antagonist Arnold Friend. The story focuses the aforementioned Connie and Arnold, Connie is 15 year old girl who loves the spotlight and all the attention that comes with it. Her beauty and vibrant
the lack of knowing her true self lets Arnold Friend overpower her in the end. The words and letters on Arnold’s car symbolize warnings that Connie should have picked up on. Because Arnold symbolizes the devil, the evil inside of him gives him advantages to manipulate Connie into leaving her house, despite everything inside of Connie screaming at her not to go. The symbolisms in these objects or people are all deeply rooted to the theme of this short story, “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” tells the tale of a fifteen year old girl named Connie living in the early 1960’s who is stalked and ultimately abducted by a man who calls himself Arnold Friend. The short story is based on a true event, but has been analyzed by many literary scholars and allegedly possesses numerous underlying themes. Two of the most popular interpretations of the story are that the entire scenario is only dreamt by Connie (Rubin, 58) and that the abductor is really the devil in disguise (Easterly, 537). But the truth is that sometimes people really can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connie, a victim of terrifying circumstance will be forever changed by her interactions with Friend.
One way that, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", is a perculiar story is how at Connies house, Connie tells him again to leave and then she fear strikes her as she grows a little dizzy when Arnold Friend begins to tell Connie where they are and what they are doing at that exact and precise moment. She gets very nervous when he tells her that he knows that they are at the barbeque at their neighbors house. Hearing this information and everything that this man knows, Connie grows extremely horrified, but also very fascinated by his precise description of what was happening. Connie wants to go into the house because Arnold Friend moves closer towards the porch ...