Analysis of Connie’s Character and Her Demise
There are some stories that capture the reader’s attention and which keep us riveted from the beginning to the ultimate line of the tale. ‘’Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’’, a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates in 1966, is one of those. Inspired by the mythic song of the phenomenal singer Bob Dylan entitled ‘’It’s all over Now, Baby Blue,’’ the author describes the main character as a 15-year-old girl named ‘’ Connie’’, who is obsessed by her beauty and does not get along with her family. The heroine of the story ‘’Connie,’’ engages in an adolescent rebellion against her entourage by acting to appear older. This increases her vulnerability through the story and at the end leads her to a perverse person. A psychological approach of this teenager’s behavior would highlight some difficulties youth encounters in their mid-adolescent life. Some attitudes that she exhibits in her fantasy life are egocentric, superficial, narcissistic, sophisticated and provocative, and they should be considered responsible for her disappearance.
Among the characters involved in the story Connie is undoubtedly the one that carries the most sympathy in the reader’s view. In the first place, her egocentric and her superficial attitude, which she seems to have because of her fragile and instable adolescence, is one of Connie’s weak traits. Connie blindly believes in herself. She is not conscious of her mother’s and her sister’s attitudes toward her. The relationship between her and the rest of the family suffers as a consequence of her megalomania. For example, when Connie’s mother notices the excessive way she pays attention to her appearance and attractiveness, she points out her concerns to...
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...arie Urbanski believe that Connie leaves with Arnold Friend because she is, ‘’bowing to absolute forces which her youthful coquetry cannot direct-absolute forces over which she has no control’’ (Clifford). To sum up, Joyce Carol Oates presents an image of young women who are insecure, hopeless and rebel against the norms of society. Those kinds of girls like Connie continue to exist in society and the shadow of people like Arnold Friend is always nearby for such women.
Works Cited
Henderson, Gloria Mason, Anna Dunlap Higgins, Bill Day, Sandra Stevenson Waller. Literature
and Ourselves. 6th ed. New York: Publishing Services Inc., 2009. Print.
Clifford J. Kurkowski. ‘’A Psychological Analysis of Connie’’: A Feminist Viewpoint of "Where
Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Web. 17 Feb, 2012
Connie is only concerned about her physical appearance. She can be described as being narcissistic because "she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirror or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right" (Oates 148). Connie wants her life to be different from everyone else's in her family. She thinks because she is prettier, she is entitled to much more. She wants to live the "perfect life" in which she finds the right boy, marries him, and lives happily ever after. This expectation is nothing less than impossible because she has not experienced love or anything like it. She has only been subjected to a fantasy world where everything is seemingly perfect. This is illustrated in the story when Connie is thinking about her previous encounters with boys: "Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs" (151).
Connie has the need to be viewed as older and as more mature than she really is, all the while still displaying childlike behavior. She shows this childlike behavior by “craning her neck to glance in mirrors [and] checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates 323). This shows that Connie is very insecure and needs other people’s approval. Although on one side she is very childish, on the other side she has a strong desire to be treated like an adult. This longing for adulthood is part of her coming of age, and is demonstrated by her going out to “bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant[s]” and meeting boys, staying out with those boys for three hours at a time, and lying to her parents about where she has been and who she has been with (Oates 325, 326). “Everything about her ha[s] two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 324). Even her physical movements represent her two-sided nature: “her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearin...
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
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.
Oates takes us to a journey of rebellion as the protagonist sorts through self-created illusion in order to come to terms with her own sexual inexperience. Connie’s desires for attention from the opposite sex, her vanity and immaturity blind her to think of the real intentions of guys, in this case Arnold Friend. A character that many critics argue is real, yet, others argue it was created by Connie’s mind.
When approached by Arnold Friend at first, she was skeptical but was still charmed by him. As she began to feel uneasy, Connie could have used her intuition to realize that he was trouble. Once she had been engaged by Arnold, her life was over. The influences on Connie and her lack of instilled reasoning led to her down fall. Her family’s fragmented nature was echoed in her actions; consequently, she was unable to communicate with her parents, and she was never was able to learn anything of significance. She felt abandoned and rejected, because no one took the initiative to teach her how to make good decisions. Connie was unable to mature until she was faced with death and self sacrifice. In the end, her situation made it difficult for her to think and reason beyond the position she was in. By not being able apply insight, she fell into Arnold Friends lure. Misguidance by the parents strongly contributed to Connie’s
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
In addition, a teenager’s feelings of self worth are dependent upon the approval of others. Connie displays this as she practices “…checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (208). And of course there is also the explosion of hormones and corresponding sexual urges and fantasies. Oates makes all of these characteristics clear in her descriptions of Connie’s actions, thoughts and feelings.
In the coming-of-age short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, a fifteen year old girl named Connie has an incident involving a strange man, Arnold Friend, that causes her to grow up quickly and causes her to see the real world for the first time. Through this incident, the author shows how Connie’s vanity, love of music, and her life without a father figure lead her to not be able to handle situations where a person uses those qualities against her; therefore, she has a harsh and quick coming of age.
Oates write this story with a purpose, as all short stories are written, yet she forces the reader to think of the ‘what ifs’ for each character. If Connie was not vain because of her family, she would not have made herself pretty to simply eat with her friends at the drive in restaurant. If Friend was not swayed at a young age that aggressive sexual actions and unsolicited pursuing are considered normal, he would not have been at that diner looking for a victim. No matter how much one thinks they make decisions for themselves, external and internal factors will always subconsciously shape the actions of an individual, and they will change the course of ones’
Additionally, Oates expresses the dangers of youth through Connie's rebellion against her family. The family has zero communication with Connie. Connie's dad is too busy working and sleeping to pay attention to his daughter. She lives two different lifestyles, one for when she's home and another for anywhere but home. Her family has no idea who Connie actually is and what happens when she goes out with her friends. Without communication, Connie loses the sense of trust with the people she is supposed to be closest to. This leaves her vulnerable to someone as manipulative as Arnold. Connie also isolates herself from her family. She perceives her mother and sister as enemies; it's Connie against the world. Connie wishes her mother were dead and
Connie exhibits two personalities in this short story. The way portrayed herself with her friends and with her family are two different personalities. When at home, Connie’s mother complains about Connie and implies that she is
Simply put, Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is an ambiguous masterpiece, laden with text-based evidence to give significance to multiple interpretations. Perhaps, in addition to the story’s rich detail and its mark of literary skill, this is why the story is so widely read among the collegiate community. The story has caused numerous critics to put forth opinions about the characters, plot, and ambiguity; however, no one has largely agreed to accept all of them as a whole—as a single meaning or message.
Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” follows a fifteen year old Connie, who acts like any rebellious teen her age. She is self centered and loves thinking about boys. One in particular is Arnold Friend, who catches Connie’s attention from the moment he drives by the restaurant. It was only a short encounter, but his gold convertible would stay in her mind. At first he seems like a normal boy just passing by in his convertible, but as the story progresses he shows his true self. He is not what and who he says he is. From the beginning Arnold seems to be a very scheming and assertive person. While this story is following Connie the person the reader should be paying attention to is Arnold Friend, a manipulative, controlling,
The reader goes through the process as Connie does from feelings of confusion to disturbed to fear. The story begins with Connie being a typical teenage girl, disobeying her parents instructions, and going to the drive-in to flirt with boys. This is an innocent action, and Connie is looking only for attention not anything sexual. “One night in mid-summer they came across, breathless with daring, and right away someone leaned out a car window and invited them over” (379). Connie does not realize how dangerous this could potentially be because she is just caught up in the idea of the being “where the older kids hung out” (379). She sees her identity as her physical attractiveness, so Connie uses these flirtatious nights to seek validation of this false identity. When Arnold Friend shows up at Connie’s house, she is confused but not yet scared. He is very charming at first and tells Connie she is cute. Connie thrives from this and “blushed a little....she couldn’t decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk” (381). Here, Connie is still stuck in her naive teenager mentality that this is nothing dangerous, and Arnold Friend is harmless. As the story progresses, Connie begins to realize that Arnold is not actually a teenager at all. “She could see then he wasn’t a kid, he was much older--thirty, maybe more. At this knowledge her heart