Delivering Moral Messages in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been and A Good Man is Hard to Find
School shootings, bombings, rape, and murder are words that are commonly seen in newspaper headlines and heard on the morning news. To most people these acts seem like senseless violence. However, writers like Joyce Carol Oates and Flannery O’Connor use these same violent images to deliver a powerful moral message. Their stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” are very comparable in the lessons that they teach.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” begins with the introduction of it’s main character, Connie, a fifteen year- old girl. Oates makes Connie’s vanity quiet well know by telling the reader that Connie has the “habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors”. Indeed, it is this vanity and Connie’s innocence that places her right in the path of Arnold Friend. Arnold will confirm this by telling Connie that there is nothing else for “a pretty girl like you but to be sweet and give in.” In fact, critics generally interpret this story as Connie’s initiation into evil.
What’s in a name? If you’re talking about one of Joyce Carol Oates’s characters, a name can say a lot. Arnold Friend’s name can be interpreted as “aren’t no friend” or “A. Friend” (Johnson 150). Either way his is a demonic figure that represents the death of Connie’s spirit. In fact, Arnold Friend is based on a serial killer know as “The Pied Piper of Tucson.” As Oates reports, this “tabloid psychopath” specialized in “the seduction and occasional murder of teenage girls” (Wesley). The Pied Piper was in his thirties; yet, he managed to counterfeit teenage dress, talk, and behavior. He also stuffed rags into his leather boots to give him height. These elements of the Pied Piper’s behavior are very obvious in Oates’s portrayal of Arnold Friend (Johnson 148).
Joyce Carol Oates dedicated “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” to Bob Dylan. His song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” was her inspiration. The many lines from Dylan’s song obviously influenced the story (see appendix A).
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in clothes that you once wore.
However, the mood and tone of the story also reveal more subtle connections (Davidson).
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” has ...
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... and The Misfit play similar demonic roles and serve as a reminder that evil can come in many forms. They both violently lead their victims to make religious epiphanies. The price paid for their spiritual rebirth is an immediate death.
Both Flannery O’Connor and Joyce Carol Oates have been criticized for their violent writings. However, the acts portrayed in their stories aren’t senseless. They are meant to show the purification of the involved characters. Also, they serve as a catharsis or reassurance of faith for the reader.
Works Cited
Davidson, Rob. Dedication of Joyce Carol Oates’s Short Story to Dylan. 16 Mar. 2000
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Friedman, Melvin L., and Clark, Beverly Lyon. Critical Essays on Flannery O’Connor.
Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1985.
Johnson, Greg. Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1994.
Portch, Stephen R. “O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’.” The Explicator 37 (1978): 19-20.
Schott, Webster. “Flannery O’Connor: Faith’s Stepchild.” The Nation 201 (1965): 142-44, 146.
Wesley, Marilyn C. “The Transgressive Other in Joyce Carol Oates’s Recent Fiction.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction XXXIII (1992): 255-62.
"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
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates wants to show a more intellectual and symbolic meaning in this short story. Oates has many symbolic archetypes throughout the short story along with an allegory. Oates uses these elements in her story by the selection of detail and word choice used. Oates does this because she wants to teach her audience a moral lesson.
The Theme of Temptation in “Where Are You Going , Where Are you Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
O’Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The Story and Its Writer. Charters, Ann. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ST. Martin's, 2011. 676-687. Print.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? N.p.: Epoch, 1966. N. pag. Print.
To the uninitiated, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. Working his way through "Greenleaf," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," or "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the new reader feels an existential hollowness reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger; O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988. 137-153.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”. Backpack Literature. An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy & Dana Gioia. 4th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2006. (323-336). Print.
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Eds. John Schilb, and John Clifford. "Chapter 13 Doing Justice" Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. p1283-1296. Print.
Joyce M. Wegs, '"Don't You Know Who I Am?': The Grotesque in Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'," in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1975, pp. 66-72.
In the short story “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”, by Joyce Carol Oates, the use of the symbolism of Connie’s clothes, her fascination with her beauty, Arnold Friend’s car and Arnold Friend himself help to understand the story’s theme of evil and manipulation. The story, peppered with underlying tones of evil, finds Oates writing about 15-year-old Connie, the protagonist of the story, a pretty girl who is a little too into her own attractiveness, which eventually gets her into trouble with a man named Arnold Friend. The story is liberally doused with symbolism, from the way Connie dresses to the shoes on Arnold Friend’s feet. In “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” the reader can pick up on some of the symbols very easily, while others need deeper thought. The subtle hints of symbolism throughout the story create a riveting tale that draws the reader in. Connie finally succumbs to Arnold Friend at the end of the story, it then becomes obvious that he represents the devil and the symbolism of her clothing and Arnold’s car all tie together to create a better understanding of the story.
1. Robinson, Sally. "Heat and Cold: Recent Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates." Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI, 1992. In Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 108. 383.
Reading between the lines of Flannery O’Connor’s work “A good Man is hard to find” leaves the reader puzzled and engrossed as their minds remains onto the setting of the story. The story begins with a bad mood, and the reader keeps waiting for good to prevail over it, but unlike most stories, the ending is a captivating draw.