Joyce Carol Oates got her inspiration for her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” when she heard of a serial killer who would seduce and kill teenage girls. Her short story is about a fifteen year old girl named Connie. Connie is pretty and she knows it, and when she is walking by cars she will stop and look at herself in the mirrors and windows. Connie has an older sister, her name is June. Connie’s mother is constantly comparing her to her sister. “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? … what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk.” (317). The things her mother says hurts Connie’s feelings to the point where she wishes her mother and herself dead just so it would all be over. …show more content…
Even though she occasionally has these feelings she knows that her mother loves her, and sometimes she thinks her mother actually loves her more than she loves June. Connie believes her mother loves her more because she is reminded of what she was like when she was younger when she looks at Connie. Despite the tension between her and her mother, Connie’s character still manages to change and develop over the course of the story. Connie does not like to spend time at home with her family, she spends most of her time with her best friend at the mall. At times they will go across the street to a restaurant where older boys hang out. One day when she is walking through the parking lot she notices a gold convertible. As she was walking by the boy in the convertible he pointed at her and said “Gonna get you, baby.” (319). She looked away and did not let it bother her. She never thought about it again until one day when the rest of her family went to a cookout. She heard a car pull up and it was the gold convertible. She went to the door and started talking to the driver. It took her a minute, but she eventually realized that these two boys were a lot older than she had originally thought. They were at least thirty years old. The driver wanted her to come for a ride with them. Connie refused but the man would not give up. Connie became very frightened when the driver started to say weird things to her. “Yes, I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will.” (327). This terrified Connie, and she threatened to call the police. However, she never actually called the police because the man threatened to come inside and get her if she touched the phone. Connie was very scared, and he was threatening her family. She had no choice to but to leave with the two men. Connie has two personalities.
One for at home with her family, and one for when she is out with her friends looking for guys. She loves that teenage boys and older men find her attractive. When she is not at home she walks and talks in a way to get the boys to notice her. She is trying to act more mature than she really is. She wants people to see her as a mature woman with experience. When in reality she just wants to look pretty for the boys, she has no interest in them perusing her sexually. Connie is a day dreamer and had this whole idea in her head of what romance and adulthood was. She really has no idea what adulthood is like and when the older man started showing her some interest sexually it terrified her. This man at her home was not her idea of romance or adulthood. However, she did not want him to know that. At first she was playing it cool, and she was calm. When the man started saying very sexual things to her it scared her, and she could not hide it. The man had Connie in a place where he knew he could get into her head and make her go with …show more content…
him. The driver of the gold convertible is Arnold Friend. He shows up at Connie’s house uninvited, and he knows things about her family and friends that he should not know. At first she was interested when he seemed to be about her age. However, soon she noticed he was a lot older than she was, and he was saying things to her that made her feel uncomfortable. That was not the only deceiving thing about him. Arnold was also making himself out to be something that he was not. The clothes he was wearing were the same type of clothes that teenagers would be wearing. He did not put his feet all the way in his boots to make himself look taller. However, it just made him look funny because he could not walk normally. He also drove a car that was painted so brightly it distracted her from his real face. His car had a saying painted on it that was once used by teenagers but the saying was no longer popular. Any interest Connie was showing him faded as soon as he started making demands, and threatening her. This story is not black and white and at times could be interpreted many different ways. “She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness” (331). This quote leads me to believe he raped her after she did not follow his rules. However, a few sentences later he is standing at the door telling her to put the phone back. Did he rape her and then walk back to the door? Or was she just imagining what was going to happen to her if she did not obey him? The story makes sense either way you interpret it. Another part of the story that was very unclear is what he said to her when she was leaving with him. “My sweet little blue-eyed girl.” (333). This is strange because Connie has brown eyes. Did her fear change the color of her eyes? Did something in her transformation lead to an eye color change? Or does Arnold prefer girls with blue eyes and was pretending her eyes were blue? These questions shows the confusion within Connie’s situation with Arnold. The quotes previously stated showed that Connie was most likely raped. The discrepancy in the color of her eyes may portray how Arnold’s feelings for her change before and after the rape. The end of the story leads me to believe Connie has accepted what is going to happen to her when she leaves with Arnold, but the way it is written makes me believe Connie dissociated herself from the situation she was in.
At one point in the story Connie starts feeling very dizzy, and then for a little bit she stops hearing everything around her, as if she is blocking everything out. She can feel her heart pounding except she does not think it is her heart. “She felt her heart pounding. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside a body that wasn’t really hers either.” (332). Her body does not feel like her own anymore. She is no longer herself, and it appears she is no longer with her body. She watches herself leave with Arnold, and what should have been her neighbor’s houses is now a field where she knows he is going to take her. Connie understood something bad was going to happen to her, and she did her best to disassociate from the situation. She did not know if she was going to survive or not, and this was her only way of showing him she was not
afraid.
I think in some strange way Arnold becomes to Connie the way to escape into her fantasy. When she learns his true intentions she is scared to death at first but eventually that fear gives way to "an emptiness." Connie thinks, "I'm not going to see my mother again... I'm not going to sleep in my bed again.
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 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).
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...
...tomy between reality and dreams quite well throughout her piece. She provides the reader with two ways to experience the story: either as reality or as reality that turns into a nightmare. This dichotomy that Oates creates “allows the reader to escape this story, and allows this story to end” (Hurley 374). The end of the story shows Connie entering the new world of experience, and Oates wants the reader to sense her fear. Oates intricately provides the reader with clues that help see why Connie’s experience with Arnold is just a nightmare. She also allows the reader to see how this nightmare is meant to scare Connie into making the realization that her decisions have consequences. I hope that anyone reading this learns from Connie that not everything we do is good for us, and we have to think about the consequences of our actions, whether good or bad, before we act.
Connie's personality also had two sides to it. The side she displayed at home is mocking and sneering, and the side she displayed in public made her look trashy. It seemed that she didn't know who she was or what she wanted to be. All she let us know is that she wanted "the caress of love," she wanted someone to be "sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs" (Oates 980). This could have been why she did not put up much of a fight at the end and walked straight into Arnold's arms. It seemed almost like this was what she wanted and what she had been dreaming about.
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
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
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.
Where Are You Going, Where have you been? is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The 75 year old American author and professor at Princeton University, introduce the story of 15 year old Connie who is rebelling against her mother’s whishes. A very arrogant and selfish girl that in her world the only thing that matters is how many heads she can turn when walking into a room. Through the story life gives her a test, to confront Arnold Friend, the antagonist of the story; who possesses a nefarious power beyond her own experience.
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
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.