Joyce Carol Oats Where Is Here

In “where is here?” Joyce Carol Oats chose to make the visitor visit certain places throughout the house in a certain order. Also how the reader is affected by the way the visitor goes through the house. As Joyce introduces the visitor to the reader the reader could assume that the stranger acted a little strange bc of when the father told him that he could come in, the visitor respectfully declined the offer and said “ I think I’ll just poke around outside for a while if you don’t mind”. The visitor first starts the conversation by saying “ I mean I was a child in this house’ and since he was in the city on business he thought he wails drop by.” The visitor at first makes makes he seems like he would like to go inside and look around the place, but then he declines the father when he gets the offer. That just makes the reader

After the kitchen the visitor moves to the dining room and then he seemed to get even more emotional because the story tells us “ the stranger appeared to be even more deeply moved moved.” Maybe the author chose to make the visitor go through the house in a certain order because he would feel more and more emotional the more he moved throughout the house. Then they move to the living room, and the visitor talks about how different it all looked. But then, he notices the window seat and that brought back even more memories of what the visitor and his mother did. Then they move upstairs to the son’s room and when the stranger makes on to his last request he breaks down in tears because he seems emotionally unstable about leaving the house “ Now the visit was truly over; the stranger, at last, was leaving, having wiped away the tears and made a stoical effort to compose himself”. The author made the visitor become more and more emotional throughout the different places of the house because each one had a desired affect on the stranger’s