Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Literal analysis on where are you going, where have you been
Where are you going, where have you been? analysis
Literal analysis on where are you going, where have you been
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”: A Critical Analysis
Of her hundreds of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” continues to be widely discussed among literary critics. In his article “Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, David Gratz claims that Oates’s story can be read as a parable for a young girl’s fear of adulthood. He agrees there is much textual evidence that Connie dreams of her disturbing experience with Arnold Friend and that he is a “psychological projection” (Gratz 55) of her subconscious fears. Gratz notes how critics Joan Winslow and Larry Rubin point out that Connie appears to fall asleep before Arnold Friend arrives to her home and that her inability to control the situation toward the end is of a nightmarish quality (55). There is further evidence which supports the idea that Connie is in fact dreaming this scenario. Gratz notes that though the ending represents the “death of a part of her” (55), it is not only the destruction brought on by her sex drive she fears. Rather, it is her fear of the inevitability of growing older and having to endure hard changes that come with it that projects itself onto Connie’s daymare.
Gratz refutes the idea that Connie subconsciously fears she is an evil person and that her active sex drive will compromise her as a person (55). This interpretation suggests that Arnold Friend is the devil’s incarnate and a representation of her fear of sex. He tells her, “yes, you had to wash your hair and you washed it for me” (Oates 208), which is suggestive of her fixation on her looks so as to be attractive to boys and even for the devil himself.
In Oates’s story, there is much textual evidence that supports Gratz...
... middle of paper ...
...r the threshold from childhood into adulthood. Puberty is not only a time of physical metamorphosis, it is also a time where one sheds his or her childish inhibitions – the “death” of childhood.
In the eyes of David Gratz, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is an allegory for a young girl’s natural anxieties, anxieties that all humans have experienced. The subconscious is a powerful projector of one’s innermost fears and desires. This story provides insight into those of a pubescent girl – her appearance, the prospect of reaching adulthood, love, and sex.
Works Cited
Gratz, David. “Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Explicator 45. 3(87): 55. Electronic.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Literature and the
Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. Boston: Pearon, 2014. 199-210. Print.
Oates uses a great number of symbols in her short story "Where are you going? Where have you been? to create an aura of unease and Devilishness. Her principal symbols are Arnold Friend, his disguise, and the music Connie listens to. Oates' use of symbolism and Biblical allusions to Satan force the reader to raise an eyebrow to the character of Arnold Friend and the doomed future of Connie.
Oates, Joyce C. "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" Compact Literature. By Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 8th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 505-16. Print.
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie is a normal teenage girl who is approached outside her home by a guy named Arnold Friend who threatens to harm her, and she obeys, if she does not get in the car with him. Connie is the main character in this story who teaches us that sometimes we might search for adult independence too early before we are actually ready to be independent and on our own. Connie is so focused on her appearance that she works hard to create a mature and attractive adult persona that will get her attention from guys. This search for independence conflicts with Connie’s relationship with her family and their protection of her. Connie’s insecurity and low self-esteem is triggered by her fear of intimacy. Connie confuses having the attention of men with actually having them pursue her in a sexual way.
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.
During the teenage years they no longer want to be labeled the “child; matter of fact, they have a strong desire to rebel against the family norms and move quickly into adulthood. This transition and want for freedom can be a very powerful and frightening thing as there are evils in this world that cannot be explained. Most parents try to understand and give their teens certain freedoms, but at what expense? Joyce Oates gives us a chilly story about a teenager that wanted and craved this freedom of adulthood called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. This is a haunting story of a young girl by the name of Connie who gives us a glimpse of teenager transitioning from childhood with the need for freedom and the consequences of her actions. Connie is described as a very attractive girl who did not like her role in the family unit. She was the daughter who could not compare to her older sister and she felt her Mom showed favoritism towards her sister. Connie is your average teen who loves music, going out with friends, and she likes the attention she receives from boys. During this time, Connie is also growing into her sexuality and is obsessing with her looks as she wants and likes to be noticed by the opposite sex. Her sexual persona and need to be free will be what is fatal to her character’s life and well-being.
Joyce Carol Oates is known for stories that have an everlasting effect on readers. Oates writing style was explained best herself, “I would like to create the physiological and emotional equivalent of an experience, so completely and in such exhaustive detail, that anyone who reads it sympathetically will have experienced that event in his mind” (Joslin 372). Oates’ short story Where are You going, Where have you been? perfectly fits the description of her work by placing the protagonist of the story Connie in a very uncomfortable situation with the antagonist Arnold Friend. The story focuses the aforementioned Connie and Arnold, Connie is 15 year old girl who loves the spotlight and all the attention that comes with it. Her beauty and vibrant
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
Further, She had been pretending to be this old mature lady but when Arnold Friend started to sexually flirt with her, she was frightened and so "sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it - the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, she cried for her mother"( 431) However, when Connie started to call for her nobody was there to help, She even called for help from her mother as a child does, but she didn’t get any help. By that time she felt so weak and the only safe place she was seeing in front of her was going with Arnold Friend. To come to a conclusion, Connie 's experience with Arnold Friend had put her in the adult world where she finds out that she is on her own
As Connie and her friend enter the infamous drive-in their faces are “pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for” (Oates 552). It seems as if they are both entering an enchanted world full of their desires. And this magical world unsurprisingly is where all the older kinds hung out and the place Connie daydreamed of when she was confined at home. This magical place is also where we first get a glance at the most magical character of the story, Arnold Friend, the villain that seduces Connie. Connie first describes him as “… a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold” (Oates 553). We later find out that this mysterious character is actually an older man around the age of 30 who dresses like all the other adolescent boys and who seems to be wearing makeup, in which Connie refers to “a mask”. “She saw how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material” (Oates
Rubin attempts to convey the idea that Connie falls asleep in the sun and has a daydream in which her “…intense desire for total sexual experience runs headlong into her innate fear…” (58); and aspects of the story do seem dream like - for instance the way in which the boys in Connie’s daydreams “…dissolved into a single face…” (210), but the supposition that the entire episode is a dream does not ring true. There are many instances in which Connie perceives the frightening truth quite clearly; she is able to identify the many separate elements of Friend’s persona - “… that slippery friendly smile of his… [and] the singsong way he talked…” (214). But because of the lack of attachment with her own family, and her limited experience in relating deeply to others, “…all of these things did not come together” (214) and Connie is unable to recognize the real danger that Arnold Friend poses until it is too late.
In Joyce Carol Oates, “Where are you going, Where have you been,” she attempts and succeeds in warning young women of the dangers of growing up too fast. The short story follows the path of young Connie as she dances the line between reality and fantasy while attempting to grow up quicker than she is prepared to. Oates is able to illustrate the issue of coming of age in modern era especially in more recent generations. Before deeply analyzing the text, it is important to understand the time period in which Oates is writing . During 60’s it was common to see women’s style and attitude changing as they were advocating for their rights to break from the role of the housewife.
At first Connie’s description toward Arnold Friend is pleasurable. She describes him wearing nice jeans, boots and attractive muscles (208). Altogether this twisted story is more related to a religious metaphor. As the story unrolls, she find out who she is dealing with. She realizes that she is dealing with super natural forces (Ubranski), as he says: “Do you know who I am.” She realizes how his voice transforms and how his smiles fades (209). It is a folkloric belief that the Devil comes in disguise, deluding who he wants (White). The Devil himself came for Connie, as he marks her with an X, perhaps already knowing that her soul was his. The devils’ desire to devour Connie is insistent. He calls her his
In the Joyce Carol Oates story, Where Are you Going, Where Have you Been, the main character, Connie, lives in this false sense of life and love. Connie believes that in her future her life will play out “the way it was in the movies and promised in songs.” Most people follow they same way as thinking as Connie. They believe that in the end it will be this happily ever after, that it might start of in a certain way but end with this gracious ending. Since Connie believes this way it affects her decision in the end of the story. This way of thinking leads to her maybe going with Arnold Friend, “she watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway”, this belief of her is almost drawing her to Arnold.
Oates’ writing style is described by Kalapakian as, “Drastic acts with drastic consequences…doomed love, destructive sex, fear, evil, madness.” (Kalapakian) This is especially present in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” considering the fact that it is inspired from a murder and rapist (Oates 205). While telling this fabricated situation Oates leaves an underlying fear in Connie that is repeatedly brought up in different ways, such as her mothering comparing her to her sister. “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister…You don’t see your sister using that junk.”(Oates 194) making it evident that Connie is worried she may never live up to be like her sister and may never please her parents or herself. Joyce Oates’ writing may have been unorthodox but in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” she addresses a reoccurring phenomenon in adolescents that is too often
The story expands on the idea of finding personal comfort through exploiting oneself. The text proves that the toll in which prior abandonment can take on one’s future search for self-discovery can be completely out of our control. In the 1960’s, when Oates wrote “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” a social revolution was occurring. American women were proclaiming their rights and liberty from men and asserting their sexuality in a way that had never been done before. One matter that was commonly discussed was adolescence and the struggles and anxieties that a great deal of young women underwent as they lost their sexual innocence and became adults. Women questioned their role in society and the role that sex played in their lives as a response to the feeling of abandonment and undervalue they struggled with in their homes and in their relationships with men. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” Oates explores this social upheaval on a smaller scale: Connie, being one young woman to many, must address her own questions and anxieties as she transitions into adulthood (“The Dedication and Time Period”). Through her use of elaborate dialogue and unique story formatting, Oates creates an anecdote that functions in way to truly help readers envision the it’s meaning. While being dependent upon oneself in an attempt to counteract the feeling of abandonment may, in perspective, seem wonderful, reality proves it doesn’t always have a constructive impact on pursuing