Joyce Carol Oates story “Where are you going, Where have you been” is told in a first person narrative. The protagonist is a young girl who is obsessed with her looks. This obsession puts the character in a predicament. A young man notices her conceitedness and comes to her house to prey upon her vulnerability. She must decide whether she should go with this man to save her family or to stay and fight, and possibly die trying. 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 …show more content…
Her relationship with her parents is normal for a fifteen year old. She is growing up and wanted to find her own identity. She wants to rebel against her parents. She is desperate to leave her life behind and find adventure. Within her social life she wants to impress her friends and the boys. She hangs with older men to show how mature she is for her age. She feels as though she is very beautiful and wants to use that to gain access in the adult world. Arnold Friend presents a challenge for Connie. He does not buy in to her bravery and her independence. He knows she is young a weak. He preys on this. He uses his age and maturity to scare her. He is evil and presents Connie with a realization that the adult life she craves is a trap. She has wished to be noticed and wished to be grown and Arnold Friend is coming to fulfill that request. He is just not what she has expected. The reader comes to understand that the author was using Arnold Friend to highlight the idea that growing up is not something a child should want to rush. That the adult world is
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.
Her father works out of town and does not seem to be involved in his daughters lives as much. Her older sister, who works at the school, is nothing but plain Jane. Connie’s mother, who did nothing nag at her, to Connie, her mother’s words were nothing but jealousy from the beauty she had once had. The only thing Connie seems to enjoy is going out with her best friend to the mall, at times even sneaking into a drive-in restaurant across the road. Connie has two sides to herself, a version her family sees and a version everyone else sees.
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).
Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Backpack Literature. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
In the story, Oates presents the main character, Connie, as a somewhat bratty teenager that does not have a close relationship with her mother or sister. Her mother shows envy towards her daughter making comments to her such as, “ Stop gawking at
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.
Arnold Friend’s layers of deception. Connie’s blindness is the pretext of her loss of innocence
An unstable home filled with broken relationships is like a shattered glass it can never be the same again because the damage is already done. Author Joyce Carol Oates portrays this in her short story “Where are you going. Where have you been?” The main character of the short story feeds off her broken home. Her family household situation motivates her to be a rebel. She ends up making so decisions that will change her life in a negative way.
Ignorance and vanity can be good, in small amounts, but too much can lead to very unwelcome consequences. Connie, a teenage girl who can’t get enough of herself, learned this the hard way when a strange man by the name of Arnold Friend arrives at her house with the intent of taking her on a ‘date’. Instead of calling the police or locking herself in, like common sense would imagine, Connie uneasily greets Arnold from her door when he gets out of his car, instantly letting her vanity and ignorance get the best of her. Joyce Carol Oates shocks the reader with the twist ending in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” in which after hearing Arnold’s threat towards her family, Connie hands herself over to Arnold allowing him
”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
When Connie first meets Arnold, she doesn’t know who he is: he’s just a creepy guy in the parking lot. However, Arnold sees her as an adult woman who is ready to pursue a relationship with her because that is what her appearance says about her. In reality that’s all it is, her appearance and she is not ready for that type of relationship. So, when Arnold Friend came by and was persuading her to come with him saying, “Don’tcha wanta see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanta go for a ride?” (Oates 375). This line is one of the many that he used to persuade girls to get into his car. Also, he is making all moves to get closer to kidnapping Connie. Connie did try to avoid him but she had false hopes. Although Connie seemed to be confused there are many girls like this that fall for someone’s charms even if they are sincere or not just because these girls seek for someone to appreciate them. Arnold Friend said. “But I promise it won’t last long and you’ll like me that way you get to like people you’re close to.” (Oates 383). These statements give Connie confidence to leave her house and go with him regardless if they just
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.
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
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.
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.