Author Joyce Oates wrote the story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, to inform her audience on the period of adolescence and social neglection during the 1960's. Connie, Author Oates's main protagonist, is a minor who travels down an emotional and mental journey. Neglected by her mother and compared to her sister, Connie finds another way out of her lonely household. After the charismatic and charmed antagonist, Arnold Friend, speaks directly to the victim, he approaches her at her house later on. Victim Connie, left her house with Arnold Friend because she felt unwanted by her family, had suicidal thoughts and was pressured by Friend. In the first three paragraphs, the author illustrates the state of Connie's relationship with her family. A father who works numerous hours, a mother who degrades her daughter's appearance and intelligence, and an older sister who …show more content…
Connie's depression leads to suicidal thoughts. Connie's resentment towards her father made it clear for the readers to observe how she felt. "...Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes..."" (Oates 977). Connie felt as though her father lacked protection she needed against her mother. Author indicates the problem she has with herself and her family. In the end, Connie going with Friend was the solution to her problem, by dying.When a person is depressed they encounter two sides of them. Some who illustrates their mood and others who do not. Connie illustrates two sides of self expression. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 978). The home side of Connie is the side that aims to keep her mother from plucking at her. The was not home side cares less on her mother's thoughts. Connie's suicidal thoughts lead her to believe that she would be happier dead than
separated and far apart even when living in one house. Furthermore, Connie wishes that her mother had died and she wants her own death, so that all ended as soon as possible, because mother disparaging a girl all the time as if she was a fault in something. Connie believes that mother loves her eldest daughter more than
That’s right. Come over here to me… Now come out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let’s see a smile, try it, you’re a brave, sweet little girl’”(Oates 7). “She put her hand against the screen. She watch herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewherein the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited”(7). What had gotten into Connie, why would she go out with Arnold knowing that all he is going to do is hurt her. Readers may think she is a state of shock and the only thing she can do to protect her family is by going with Arnold.
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.
In her famous short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates shows the transition from childhood to adulthood through her character Connie. Each person experiences this transition in their own way and time. For some it is leaving home for the first time to go to college, for others it might be having to step up to a leadership position. No matter what, this transition affects everyone; it just happens to everyone differently. Oates describes Connie's unfortunate coming of age in a much more violent and unexpected way than the typical coming of age story for a fifteen year old girl.
However, as I continued to read the story I began to wonder if maybe Connie’s life was not in any way parallel to my own. I have a younger sister where she has an older sister, but that is where the similarities end. Her mother is always telling her that she should be more like June, her older sister. It seemed to me that June living with her parents at her age was unusual, but the fact that she seemed to enjoy this and was always doing things to h...
Joyce Carol Oates intrigues readers in her fictional piece “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by examining the life of a fifteen year old girl. She is beautiful, and her name is Connie. Oates lets the reader know that “everything about her [Connie] had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere but home (27). When Connie goes out, she acts and dresses more mature than she probably should. However, when she is at home, she spends the majority of her time absorbed with daydreams “about the boys she met”(28). This daydreaming behavior is observable to the reader throughout the story. From theories about dreams, theories about subconscious thought, and the clues that Oates provides, the reader is lead to believe that Connie’s experience with Arnold Friend is a nightmare used to awaken her to the consequences that her behavior could result in.
Connie's character plays a big role in what ultimately happens to her. Connie is a vain girl that thinks the way you look is everything. She plays the stereotypical part for girls in today's society. She thinks that as long as you are pretty and dress a certain way then you are everything. This comes across when Oates writes "Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June because she was prettier" (980). By flaunting her looks she could easily give a guy like Arnold Friend perverted ideas about her. It could make them see her as easy, which he did.
Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" written in the late sixties, reveals several explanations of its plot. The story revolves around a young girl being seduced, kidnapped, raped and then killed. The story is purposely vague and that may lead to different interpretations. Teenage sex is one way to look at it while drug use or the eerie thought that something supernatural may be happening may be another. The story combines elements of what everyone may have experienced as an adolescent mixed with the unexpected dangers of vanity, drugs, music and trust at an early age. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to choose what the real meaning of this story is. At one point or another one has encountered, either through personal experience or through observation, a teenager who believes that the world is plotting against them. The angst of older siblings, peer pressure set upon them by their friends, the need for individualism, and the false pretense that at fifteen years of age, they are grown are all factors which affect the main character in this story.
”Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates, which explores the life of a teenage girl named Connie. One of the issues this story divulges is the various stresses of adolescence. Connie, like so many others, is pressured to conform according to different social pressures, which displays the lack of respect female adolescents face. The music culture, young men, and family infringe upon young female minds to persuade them to look or act in certain ways, showing a disrespect for these girls. While some perhaps intend their influence for good, when put into practice, the outcome often has a negative effect. Moreover, this can lead young women to confusion and a lack of self-respect, which proves
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
Connie is a round character, “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home”, writes the nararrator. Everything was different when she was not home, her walk, voice, laugh, appearance, and her true self seemed split. In the start of the story, Connie is able to keep these two selves entirely seperate, until her experience with Arnold. Here her sexual, flirtatious and confident “friend self” collides with her sweet, shy, innocent “family self” for the first time. She is unable to handle this collision of her two selves and we see her realize she has lost sight of her identity.
"Where are you going, where have you been?" written by an American writer, "Joyce Carol Oates". The story is written in the third person limited omniscient point of view, the tone switches from the ignorance to hopelessness in the end. The main character of the story is Connie, a self-centred, fifteen years old beautiful girl: Like every typical teenager, she is rebellious and totally into herself, who daydream about boys and romance. Throughout the story, Oates discloses many major factors of worry; Such as the lack of conversation between a child and a parent, Our safety, the eagerness of growing up, and how we tend to trust anyone with same preferences as ours. In life, many times we take our family, our lifestyle, and other very important things for granted without considering about the value of them and the twist which life will bring; Similarly, Connie was also clueless about her destiny.
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.
Analyzing the story using an existential lens enhances the story’s lessons. For instance, it is during her encounter with Arnold Friend that Connie transitions into womanhood and learns that being a woman means taking responsibility and being other
Oates presents the reader with Connie, a flawed character whose issues with her family and her troubled social life lead to her coming face to face with the evils of adulthood. Oates protagonist Connie is presented as a beautiful, and well socialized girl. She is a normal teenager girl who dislikes her parents, and is obsessed with her looks and boys. Her