The short story by Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and the film "Smooth Talk" both contained two main characters, Connie and Arnold Friend. Connie is a naïve fifteen-year-old girl who has a selfish, high ego and arrogant characteristics. Ironically named for his character, Arnold Friend is a precarious person who appears to be in his late teenage years, but is actually a man in his mid to late thirties. Like most teenagers, Connie wants to gain more independence from her family. Connie’s neediness for independence is caustic because her father ‘was away at work most of the time’ and ‘didn’t bother talking much to them’ (Oates 3.12-14). However her mother ‘noticed everything and knew everything’ (Oates 1.2) and she ‘always scolded Connie’ (Oates 1.3) mostly for not being like her older sister, June. Connie is a very typical teenager. She is at that age when teenagers think they know better than their parents what is best for them. In the movie adaptation ‘Smooth Talk’ directed by Joyce Chopra, Connie is noticeably more disrespectful to her mother, nevertheless her mother’s blatant disgust for her daughter is also much more apparent. Connie is coming-of-age and looking for romance, therefore, she wants independence from her family and craves attention from boys. Connie’s first encounter with her adversary occurs when she sneaks across the highway to a diner instead of going to the movie theater. Arnold Friend is depicted as ‘a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold.’ (Oates 7.46) After Connie glanced over her shoulder at him a second time, Arnold Friend exclaims that he’s “gonna get you, baby”. Connie thinks nothing of it and ignores him. Little did she know that he wanted ... ... middle of paper ... ... Friend poses towards her and that’s what caused her difficulties. A possible theme for the short story ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been’ and the film ‘Smooth Talk’ is ‘be careful what you wish for’ because in the end, you just might get it. Connie wanted to be alone and she wanted male attention which got her nowhere because she ended up getting tricked by a possible pedophile into being with him. Both the short story and the film adaptation show various connections with themes of vulnerability and family issues. The film is ideally a better version of the story because it elicits numerous instances to emphasize certain themes that aren’t clearly revealed in the short story. In the short story, the audience has the opportunity to understand Connie’s story. However, in the film, the audience has a better chance to witness how Connie overcomes her troubles.
First of all, Connie was not happy at home. The story says that her father "was away at work most of the time," and "didn't bother talking much to them," so Connie didn't have love from him and had to find male attention somewhere else. Connie found her happiness in escaping with her friend to the drive-in restaurant and daydreaming about boys. But the happiness she found in both of these things had nothing to do with actual events; it is based on a fantasy. When she was out at the drive-in with a boy, her face gleamed "with the joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music." When she daydreamed about boys, they all "fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling mixed up with the urgent pounding of the music..."
Smooth Talk is a movie about a 15-year-old girl named, Connie. She was known to be a very beautiful, but wild. Connie and her friends went out almost every weekend to the mall to meet boys and go shopping. The Connie outside of her home was very different from the Connie inside her house. She dressed, talked, and acted differently when she was with her family. It was only because of the relationship she had with them, especially her mother. Because she was such a pretty girl, her mother resented her. She didn’t like the way she paid so much attention to herself. When she looked in the mirror, she stared. She admired her looks and the way she put her clothes together. Its safe to say that Connie was self- centered and naÏve.
Connie, from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, wants to rebel against her family. She uses her attractiveness to flirt with boys at the local restaurant behind their backs as a form of rebellion. She feels as though her family does not appreciate her; her father does not pay any attention to her and her mother constantly compares her to her sister, criticizing her every move and asking why she cares so much about her appearance. On one of her outings she sees a boy who she vainly chooses to ignore. Later he shows up at her house posing as her friend, calling himself Arnold Friend, and talking to her as though he is another boy she flirts with down at the diner and pretending to be her age. She subtly flirts with him at first, only realizing the danger when it is too late.
Arnold Friend takes advantage of Connie’s teenage innocence for something of a much more sinister purpose. Connie thought she had it all figured out until Arnold Friend came into her life and up her driveway on one summer, Sunday afternoon and made her realize how big and scary the world can be. Arnold embodies everything that Connie has dreamed about in a boy, but is in the most malevolent form of Connie’s dream boy. She always wanted to get away from her family because she has always felt as if she didn’t belong and Arnold can make this possible just in the most predatory way. She always thought sex would be sweet (and consensual) and that she would be in charge of how it progressed, Arnold strips her of the authority she’s held in any other encounter with a boy. The moral of the story is always be careful what you wish
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).
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates wants to show a more intellectual and symbolic meaning in this short story. Oates has many symbolic archetypes throughout the short story along with an allegory. Oates uses these elements in her story by the selection of detail and word choice used. Oates does this because she wants to teach her audience a moral lesson.
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”
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
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.
Oates drew the character of Connie very well - she possesses many of the qualities that teenaged children share. According to developmental psychologists, adolescents become highly critical of siblings, and peer relationships take precedence over familial ties during these years (Feldman, 455). These traits are apparent in Connie’s unflattering description of her older sister June, “…she was so plain and chunky…” (209) and the fact that Connie spends many nights out with friends, but refuses to attend an afternoon picnic with her family (211).
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.
Arnold Friend imposes a devilish and menacing pressure upon Connie, who ultimate gives in, like a maiden entranced by a vampire's gaze. His appearance, sayings, and doing all combine to form a terrifying character that seems both reasonable and unlikely at the same time. There are people like Arnold Friend out there, not as incoherently assembled, and still he seems an extraordinary case of stalker. A small and even insignificant aside about his name, Arnold Friend, is that with the R's his name would read A'nold F'iend, or "An Old Fiend" i.e. the devil. But, regardless, Arnold Friend is very precisely portrayed as a corrupter of youths and a deflowerer of virgins. Without his useless sweet-nothings or his strange balance problem, he would come across less dangerous and alluring.
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...
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
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...