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Connie character analysis
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Where are you going, where have you been, is about a girl named Connie, who is home alone while her parents are away at a cookout. While Connie is at home she gets a visit from this stranger named Arnold friend. Arnold is very scary to Connie, and all Arnold wants to do is to get Connie in his car and take her for a ride. After refusing to get in the car several times, Arnold starts threatening Connie. Arnold threatened to burn her family’s home down, and he threatened to come in the house to get her. A lot of people may ask, Is Connie is a victim or hero? I personally think she is a heroic victim. I say heroic victim because all she wanted to do was protect her family from a dangerous stranger, and let’s not forget about she was probably a victim of involuntary sexual contact. This is why I say Connie is a heroic victim. …show more content…
“I'm the boy for you and like I said, you come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels’’ (WAYG,WHYB). Connie wants to keep her family safe from this stranger. I’m pretty sure that we all would’ve done what Connie did if we didn’t have any other choice. I also think that Connie does like him, but he seems to be a little too aggressive, and it probably turned her off. However, there are several parts in this story when Connie had a chance to call for help. She is only willing to go with Arnold to save her family. In order for Arnold to get Connie, he knows he must persuade her to come with him, and what better way to do it than threaten a person’s family. I think that Connie wanted to go with him, but his threats were a little too much to be used for
Arnold Friend is an important character in Connie’s story because he is one of the main reasons she goes undergoes a change. In short, while Connie is going through a teenage phase of exploring sexuality, he comes to Connie’s house to take her with the intention of raping her. More importantly he is portrayed with some of devilish appearances and behavior, to stress the idea of the situation Connie has gotten into and the meaning of her transition. The devil archetype is seen as an evil character that embodies devil characteristics as well as tempting the protagonist with things that will ruin their soul. Thesis Statement!!!! Some evidence that Arnold Friend is the devil incarnate are the facts that he does not cross threshold, he seems to be all-knowing and he has to tempt and persuade Connie to leave with him.
"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
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.
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.
“He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby.” The quote foreshadows future events in the story because of the fact that Arnold says, “Gonna get you, baby.” There’s no actual reasoning behind why he chooses her, but it states he might try something later on. Oates also uses small wording to kind of hint at the readers. “Her mind was filled was all filled with trash daydreams.” (Oates 1). This quote tends to shape the short story. This quote leads readers to the possibility that Connie’s experience with Arnold could have all been a foreshadowing to a trashy daydream. In the article “Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by David K. Gratz, he also points out the quote. “Both Rubin and Winslow note that seems to be falling asleep just before he arrives, and Rubin points out the nightmare quality of her being unable to act in the end.” (Gratz). This article more or less solidifies the fact that Connie might of fell asleep and dreamed up the whole encounter. In all, Oates uses multiple accounts of foreshadowing to further the possibility of the encounter being all just a bad dream of
Connie's actions also played a big role in her abduction. Connie liked to go out and hang out with guys. She liked to hang out with different guys, not the same one every night. Guys talk about girls like this and spread nasty rumors about them. These rumors probably did not escape the ears of Arnold Friend. So even before he saw Connie for the first time he probably had the idea that she was easy. He said as much towards the end of the story when he started naming people she knew and telling her that they told him things about her (Oates 983).
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”
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,"
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
He’s coming to get me” (8). In her vulnerability, Connie even seeks her parents despite previous efforts to distance herself, revealing her childish nature. This demonstrates a loss of innocence and a desire to return to the safety of childhood, as Connie realizes the danger of Arnold Friend. Despite her efforts, Connie is not ready for adulthood. In her pursuit of independence, Connie becomes entangled with a dangerously mature situation she is unprepared to handle. This parallels the loss of innocence many adolescents suffer as they venture into adulthood: many teens quickly lose their idealized vision of adulthood as they realize the challenges of adulthood. Connie’s confrontation with Arnold Friend is a metaphor for the loss of innocence all teens are confronted with as they seek maturity. Although the story encompasses a teenage girl's dangerous romantic rendezvous, it is more of an encounter with the expectations and reality of adulthood, through Connie's infatuation and later fear of Friend. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is a metaphor for the loss of innocence teenagers face, as their idealized perception of adulthood
Where Are You Going, Where have you been? is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The 75 year old American author and professor at Princeton University, introduce the story of 15 year old Connie who is rebelling against her mother’s whishes. A very arrogant and selfish girl that in her world the only thing that matters is how many heads she can turn when walking into a room. Through the story life gives her a test, to confront Arnold Friend, the antagonist of the story; who possesses a nefarious power beyond her own experience.
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 ...
due to her family leaving to attend a barbeque. Like Chet, Connie also has to rely on herself to overcome her obstacles, such as the threatening Arnold Friend. Stegner and Oates both use this plot point in order to establish that their characters cannot rely on their family for help or protection, which emphasizes their transition to adulthood. In Stegner’s depiction, the purpose seems to be the successful overcoming of obstacles that a child, specifically a boy, has to go through in order to become a man.