There is a point in everyone’s life where transitions are unavoidable. These passages may be large or small, voluntary or involuntary. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", written by Joyce Carol Oates, examines the definite moment people endure when at the crossroads between the delusions and purity of youth and the unknown future.
When readers join their analysis together with Joyce Carol Oates' goal, her intended life message is best understood. This kind of literary analysis is known as Reader Response. In Reader Response, the importance is fixed on "the ideas that various readers respond in various ways, and therefore the readers as well as the authors ‘create' meaning" (Barnet). In this story full of transitions and
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This explains why literature is a combination of the intentions of the author and the response of the reader.
The life message starts with the title of the work. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” itself portrays the passages in time people live. “Where are you going” conveys a time that’s to come while “where have you been” suggests a time that has past. The plot and characters also carry on Joyce Carol Oates’ message. The main aspects of the work are from a 1965 crime, happening just a year before “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was published. “The parallels between the two tales are so numerous that Oates' borrowing of them is unquestionable" (Coulthard). Even Oates confirmed the relation, saying that she wrote the work "after having read about a killer in some Southwestern state in a magazine” (Reaske and Knott). Oates’ use of the 1965 real-life crime in her piece of the work proves the effect it had on her. In 1965 Charles Schmid raped and murdered a young female whose name was Alleen Rowe. Connie who plays the victim in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” closely resembles Alleen. Each of the young girls was 15 and had
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Since “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” has been proven to be based on the real-life 1965 murder of Alleen Rowe it serves as a reliable representation of Oates’ message regarding the end of innocence. Angel went on after Oates’ story was published to kill two more girls. Had Oates known this I still don’t think that the ending of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” would change. The story ended with Connie "moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited" (Oates). It ended feeling a bit unfinished adding to the point of the work. The work visited the transition between an adolescent dream world and the beginning of something anonymous. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” ended at that transition in the victim’s
“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.
Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” clearly illustrates the loss of innocence adolescents experience as they seek maturity, represented by Connie's dangerous encounter with Arnold Friend. Connie symbolizes the many teens that seek independence from their family in pursuit of maturity. Connie’s great desire to grow up is apparent from the beginning of the story, as she experiments with her sexuality. However, it is clear that Connie is not interested in pursuing a relationship, but relishes the maturity she feels after being with the opposite sex. After following a boy to his car, she was “gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place” (2). This suggests that Connie's exploits
Joyce Carol Oates intrigues readers in her fictional piece “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by examining the life of a fifteen year old girl. She is beautiful, and her name is Connie. Oates lets the reader know that “everything about her [Connie] had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere but home (27). When Connie goes out, she acts and dresses more mature than she probably should. However, when she is at home, she spends the majority of her time absorbed with daydreams “about the boys she met”(28). This daydreaming behavior is observable to the reader throughout the story. From theories about dreams, theories about subconscious thought, and the clues that Oates provides, the reader is lead to believe that Connie’s experience with Arnold Friend is a nightmare used to awaken her to the consequences that her behavior could result in.
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.
Each of us experiences transitions in our lives. Some of these changes are small, like moving from one school semester to the next. Other times these changes are major, like the transition between youth and adulthood. In Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", the author dramatizes a real life crime story to examine the decisive moment people face when at the crossroads between the illusions and innocence of youth and the uncertain future.
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.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates is a great Southern gothic because of how we, the audience, can relate to the main characters. We know people like Arnold Friend from the newspaper clippings and books about notorious serial killers like Charles Schmid, Ted Bundy, and Charles Manson. We could be an accomplice like Ellie Oscar as Milgram’s experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and Susan Atkins shows us. Finally, we are Connie. Connie is a normal person, living a normal life, until it is ended by a cruel kidnapper which we know could be reality from the kidnapping stories of Elizabeth Smart, Anne Sluti, and Jaycee Dugard. Oates story is scary because it has the ability to be true and we, the audience, can identify with each character Arnold Friend, Ellie Oscar, and Connie.
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.
”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
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.
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.
Quite often in life we wish for things bigger than ourselves. Seeming to get wrapped up in our own minds we do not pay attention to reality. As reality comes full force we are not sure how to take it, so we let it take us. In the writing “Where are you going, where have you been?” we see Oates craft archetypes and allegories into the work through detail and word choice in order to help the reader understand the shocking outdistancing of day dreams and the overshadowing sockdolager called reality. These archetypes and allegories provide a way for the reader to join Connie in the story, but also to see the danger of what Connie doesn’t see.
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.
In her famous short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates shows the transition from childhood to adulthood through her character Connie. Each person experiences this transition in their own way and time. For some it is leaving home for the first time to go to college, for others it might be having to step up to a leadership position. No matter what, this transition affects everyone; it just happens to everyone differently. Oates describes Connie's unfortunate coming of age in a much more violent and unexpected way than the typical coming of age story for a fifteen year old girl.
Gale Kozikowski, Stan. " The Wishes and Dreams Our Hearts Make in Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'. " Journal of the Short Story in English. 33 (Autumn 1999): 89-103.