“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” written by Joyce Carol Oates is an unsettling and incredibly formidable story of a young woman’s loss of innocence during a time of social change and turbulent times. The story’s protagonist is Connie, a self-absorbed, yet beautiful fifteen year old girl, who not only is at odds with her family but also the conservative values handed down by her family. She, unknowing to her parents, spends her evenings exploring her independence and individuality as well as by flirting and picking up boys at a local diner. One evening she catches the attention of a strange, creepy boy who drives a gold, dilapidated convertible. While alone at home one Sunday afternoon, this same creepy boy driving the gold convertible, along with a friend, pulls up in front of her house. She recognizes the boy from the diner and he introduces himself as Arnold Friend. Initially, the silver-tongued, charismatic stranger intrigues Connie. This intrigue quickly turns to fear as a sense of uneasiness overcomes her. As Arnold insists she go for a ride with him, Connie refuses. He becomes more insistent and sinister and ultimately threatens to harm her family if she does not come with him. The story ends as Connie gives in and agrees to go with him; her immediate fate uncertain.
First published in 1966, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is a story inspired by a Life magazine article about Charles Schmid, a manipulative and gruesome serial killer in Tucson, Arizona, who preyed upon the innocence of young girls (Ramsland). In addition to the factual events that greatly influenced this short story, Oates was able to show the monumentally historical events that were shaping America when it was written. The story is set...
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...ome because the horrible historical event that inspired this story back in 1966 will persists within our society today.
Works Cited
Anderson, Walt. The Age of Protest. Pacific Palisades, CA: Goodyear Pub., 1969. Print.
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Ramsland, Katherine. "Charles Schmid, the Pied Piper of Tucson --The Crime Library — Inspiration for Joyce Carol Oates — Crime Library on TruTV.com." TruTV.com: Not Reality. Actuality. Web. 06 Aug. 2011.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story that is about a fifteen year old pretty teenager named Connie, who does not get along with her mother and is irritated by her sister. Her sister can do no wrong in her mother's eyes while she is constantly getting criticized. Connie enjoys listening to music, watching movies, and spends a lot of time going out with her best friend and meeting boys. Until one day, a creepy guy, she had seen out one night shows up in her driveway when her family is out. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend and insists that Connie go for a ride with him and threatens to harm her family if she doesn't. In the story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates portrays Arnold Friend as a rapist; he creates the climax of the story in which Connie is taken from her home and family, by him through violent means.
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Celestial Timepiece. July 2007. U of San Francisco. 15 Mar. 2008.
This paper will compare and contrast the short story written by Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Joyce Chopra’s very popular film, Smooth Talk, which is based upon the short 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
* Wegs, Joyce M. "'Don't You Know Who I Am?' The Grotesque in Oates' 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'" Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Ed. Linda W. Wagner. Boston: G. K. Hall 1979.
Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. By Frank Madden. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 436-48. Print.
She immediately trusts him because they simply like the same radio station. The young girl has proven throughout the story that she is curious about sex. The reader also learns that she loves attention and Connie initially finds the attention that she is receiving by Friend to be rather flattering and the fact that she thinks he’s an older boy intrigues even more. Her fate though, seems to fit the extremist world in which she inhabits. A habitat where women are viewed by men as objects of beauty for their consumption. Connie later realizes that something is odd about Arnold. She notices that the slogans on his car are outdated. She notices his painted face, his wig, and his boots. Susan Nyikos was another writer that wrote an analysis on Where are you going, where have you been. She suggested that the reason Connie realized this was because he was only a figment of her imagination and that she had never awaken from her nap. Nyikos also noted that another critic stated that Arnold Friend was the devil and that’s what explained the hooves hidden by the boots. What Susan mainly argued was that “Like many of Oates's stories, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is based on real events—the story of a "tabloid psychopath known as 'The Pied Piper of Tucson'" whose specialty was the seduction and occasional murder of teen-aged girls,"
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.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” tells the tale of a fifteen year old girl named Connie living in the early 1960’s who is stalked and ultimately abducted by a man who calls himself Arnold Friend. The short story is based on a true event, but has been analyzed by many literary scholars and allegedly possesses numerous underlying themes. Two of the most popular interpretations of the story are that the entire scenario is only dreamt by Connie (Rubin, 58) and that the abductor is really the devil in disguise (Easterly, 537). But the truth is that sometimes people really can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connie, a victim of terrifying circumstance will be forever changed by her interactions with Friend.
The open ended design of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” leaves what happens to Connie to the reader’s interpretation but it also brings to question how it could’ve gone for her if she hadn’t been ignorant and self obsessed and whether if she would’ve been kidnapped either way. Everything can be good in moderation, whether it be the blissfulness of ignorance or the confidence that comes with small amounts of narcissism, but without moderation these ideals can be detrimental to what happens to those who go too
Robinson, Sally "Heat and Cold: Recent Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates," Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI, 1992.
Death and Reality in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates
Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Backpack Literature. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Joyce Carol Oates could be described as a “social novelist” but of a peculiar kind. She is not concerned with demonstrating the power of relationships, but rather the struggle of people expressing their fate with relationships to society. Oates also wants to express her concern with people in a way that they express themselves and the conscious they are ‘living’ in. She is also more than most woman writers, she is expressively open to the social turmoil, and the chaos of American life. Oates states how the human mind is simply a “wonderland”, and the significance of that to the social conflicts that is America today simply collide but do not connect (Wagner-Martin, 117). She was born in 1938 in Lockport New York and has published over 40 novels and creating countless short stories, as well as plays and poetry. She had a passion for writing since she was young, but