Joyce Carol Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'

Music impacts most people on a daily basis as they go through their life, but in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” it is a driving force of the story. Oates uses music in the story to add ambiance and meaning to places and dramatic points in the story, and she even dedicated her story to famous musician Bob Dylan. Throughout the short story the protagonist named Connie is constantly focused on the music in her surroundings and it ranges from something to depend on to a way for people to connect to her and get inside her mind. At first, music is prominent in the restaurant Connie goes with her friend on her nights out and she illustrates it as “the music that made everything so good” having it always in the background while it was “like music at a church service, it was something to depend upon.”

Speaking as if he were saying lines rehearsed from a song, Arnold came closer to her still. Upon reaching the doorstep Connie could see that his face was covered in makeup and how fake he looked. Ellie repeatedly asked if he wanted the phone taken out so he wouldn’t have to worry about the police being called and one of the times he pulled the radio away from his face and grimaced as if the air without it was too much for him. When Connie finally picked up the phone she was so sick with fear after all of the threats to her family that all she could muster after were screams. Sitting exhausted on the floor, she followed Arnold’s instructions as if she were hypnotized. She got up, went to the door, and pushed it open to Arnold who said “My sweet little blue-eyed girl” which has nothing to do with her brown eyes but it is “taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of land behind