In Joyce Carol Oates’ highly analyzed short story, "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” a very peculiar man who goes by the name Arnold Friend, is obsessed with a fifteen-year-old teenager named Connie. Connie is a conventional adolescent, who desires acceptance and attention from those around her. Connie’s mother seems to be the one who is never pleased with her daughter no matter how hard Connie tries. This short story has been taken and turned upside down for decades now, critics have stretched this tale and compared Friend to the devil, and others have taken it as far as comparing Arnold Friend to a messiah of some sort. The various number of theories that have been passed around with this piece of literature is astounding. However, …show more content…
She is greatly influenced by pop culture and desires to be the “cool” teenager. She constantly vies to be noticed by boys and is willing to do anything to do so. Before the young girl meets Friend, she sits in her backyard by herself while her family is away at a barbecue and as it says in the text: 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 into thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been […] and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was […] She shook her head as if to get awake (Oates 160) The allusion that the reader should pick up is when Connie “shook her head as if to get awake”, it creates a feeling that Connie is going to sleep (Oates 160). Perhaps foreshadowing that she is daydreaming the rest of the events in the …show more content…
He starts off by saying “I ain’t late, am I?” to Connie who has no clue why this man keeps bothering her. She remembers him from the teenage party she went to when he told her “Gonna get you, baby” (Oates 159). When Arnold asks Connie to get in his fancy gold car and calls her cute, she blushes and releases her hair, letting it hang off her shoulder possibly trying to impress Friend. Connie was unsure what to do “she couldn’t decide if she liked him or if he was just being a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn’t come down or go back inside (Oates 161-162). Arnold Friend is the type of guy you do not want to be around, he is a typical bad boy. The aura he gives off is insanely creepy but Connie is attracted by this. Connie’s “stalker”, Arnold Friend, represents Connie’s detachment from her family and her erotic, sexual thoughts. Connie is going through a time in her life where her parents are not there for her and she is alone. Oates’ uses the “implications of rape and lethal assault account for the power of the story to convey vulnerability in a pubescent girl who foresees that she can never return to the safety of childhood”
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.
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean, don't fool around," he said, shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig…” (Oates 6). Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” highlights an altercation, meeting, conflict and dispute between a teenage girl, named Connie, and a psychotic rapist named Arnold Friend. Throughout their altercation, Arnold Friend tempts and encourages Connie to get in the car with him and lead her to a variety of possible dangerous situations, one of which includes her getting raped . There is no doubt that Joyce Carol Oates’ uses Arnold Friend in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” to symbolize the Devil and embody all of the evil and sinister forces that are present in our world. This becomes apparent when the reader focuses on how deranged Arnold Friend is and begins to
Arnold Friend, one of the two main characters in the short story “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been” written by Joyce Carol Oates, is looked upon as a controversial character. Friend has many distinct character traits, but it is often argued whether those traits are good or bad. Some view Friend as a savior figure, while others see him as a satanic representation. Throughout the story, Oates uses many symbols to convey Friend’s character. Arnold Friend is portrayed as a savior through the symbolic usage of music, cars, and clothing.
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 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”
that she omnisciently sees herself walk out to Arnold Friend and her inevitable ruin. Connie steps
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
The mysterious Arnold Friend goes to Connie’s house. He tries to convince Connie to take a ride in his car. Most people will deny the offer, but seeing as though Connie is unruly, she is easily persuaded by Arnold . Arnold deceives Connie with his charm and ride. He takes her to a place where she does not know. We find that Mr. Friend is not so friendly, but a sick soul with a loose tongue. In addition to this I agree with author Christina Marsden Gills of “Short Story Criticism, vol.6” when she explains that:
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.
In Joyce Carol Oates’, “ Where are You going Where have you been,” it was a sunday morning when Arnold continues another one of his daily routines. The main girl, Connie, is a self-centered and shy girl, whose mother is always puts her in the background and makes her feel excluded. For instance, her mother says rude comments like “you think your so pretty” and “you don't see your sister using that junk” (1). Then a guy came into her life. “Where are You Going Where Have You been illustrates a man who uses charms and good looks to get young or middle aged women to satisfy himself, but with this one girl he has some trouble along the way.
The short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” written by Joyce Carol Oates, hasn’t failed to leave readers captivated and terrified. Many critics analyze what exactly happened during the story, was the whole scene a dream or was Arnold Friend really the devil? Those two speculations represent a big part of the story, the character who is often forgotten in analysis, continues to be Ellie Oscar. Although he rarely speaks, Ellie’s mysterious and passive identity is still important. In the article titled, “The Identity of Ellie Oscar Reconsidered” by Anthony Ellis, he offers the idea that Ellie and Eddie were actually the same person, which would explain where Arnold got his information about Connie. In contrast, Alice Hall Petry’s
The external conflict in Oate’s story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, is when Connie meets this mysterious stranger named Arnold Friend. Connie first comes across Arnold when she is hanging out with a boy named Eddie. The second time she glances at him he says, “Gonna get you, baby” (p. 7). She ignores him and continues enjoying her date with Eddie. Soon enough, when Connie’s family left for a barbeque and she stayed home alone, she heard a car pull up on the drive way. Arnold then initiates conversation with Connie and asks her if she wants to go for a ride with him. She rejects his offer because she has no idea who this “Arnold Friend” is, yet he keeps insisting, “Don’tcha wanna see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanna go for a ride?”
There are many notorious characters in literature, all with their own menacing qualities and depraved actions. None, however, have struck such a devastatingly creepy chord as Arnold Friend of Joyce Carol Oates "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Seducer of young girls and embodiment of Lucifer, Arnold Friend is anything but a friend. Arnold Friend is presented through both actions and appearances, and these combine to diminish his likeability, while adding to his devilish persona. Although Arnold Friend's traits are never stated outright, they are presented through his speech and interaction with other characters, which ultimately creates a more impacting effect and lasting impression.
By doing that, it also gave Arnold Friend a hint that she was easy to manipulate. Then, concerning the dialogue element, the explanation for both the movie and the short-story will be the same since I use the passage between Arnold Friend and Connie at her house. Since Connie is responding so naively at the very beginning of their conversation, it is almost certain that Arnold would succeed to manipulate her. In fact, the biggest mistake she made was to actually get out of the house and start the conversation with him: "She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door, her bare toes curling down off the step" (314). Through this action, it already gave Arnold Friend the idea that she is innocent and vulnerable; the only thing left was to seduce her with his words. Finally, I believe the movie would better suits the theme because we can visually observe how innocent she is with her mimics, her behaviour, her clothing. Although Oates’ short-story is very descriptive, the message behind this story doesn’t have the same effect on us than the
In the short story “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”, by Joyce Carol Oates, the use of the symbolism of Connie’s clothes, her fascination with her beauty, Arnold Friend’s car and Arnold Friend himself help to understand the story’s theme of evil and manipulation. The story, peppered with underlying tones of evil, finds Oates writing about 15-year-old Connie, the protagonist of the story, a pretty girl who is a little too into her own attractiveness, which eventually gets her into trouble with a man named Arnold Friend. The story is liberally doused with symbolism, from the way Connie dresses to the shoes on Arnold Friend’s feet. In “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” the reader can pick up on some of the symbols very easily, while others need deeper thought. The subtle hints of symbolism throughout the story create a riveting tale that draws the reader in. Connie finally succumbs to Arnold Friend at the end of the story, it then becomes obvious that he represents the devil and the symbolism of her clothing and Arnold’s car all tie together to create a better understanding of the story.