Where are you going, where have you been manages such alarming issues as sexuality, assault, and youth in American culture amid the 50's and 60's, this has been the focal point of numerous women's activist verbal confrontations. The story begins by portraying a young woman named Connie and her look for freedom as she nears adulthood. She enthusiastically keeps running over an interstate to a fast food eatery loaded with more established high school young men and well known music. In the same way as other youngsters she tries different things with her persona, receiving an alternate arrangement of idiosyncrasies when with her associates. Connie has started to remove herself from her folks' security and control: she lies about heading off to the motion pictures so as to see a kid and professes to despise a wild companion her mom is worried about. Amid one of her surreptitious trips, Connie meets Arnold Friend, who will abuse her want for freedom and her longing to abandon her youth. Through enthusiastic and conceivably physical viciousness, he drives her change into the grown-up world, ruthlessly separating her from the life she knows. Connie's provisional high school move far from her folks and towards autonomy has been unnaturally and irritatingly hurried. …show more content…
Connie had two sides to her character. To begin with, Connie possesses distinctive personas relying upon the setting she ends up in; at home she is one individual, with her companions she is another. Moreover Arnold Friend's personality is conflicted. He introduces himself as an adolescent kid, yet over the span of the story it turns out to be evident that his outward character is a façade concealing something substantially more evil and the other is he can be viewed as the fiend incarnate. Then again Arnold can be interpreted as only an invention of Connie's creative
The story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” has many underlying themes and can be subject to different interpretations.
"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
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.
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.
There is an old saying "there is a thin line between love and hate." Well, there is an even thinner line between maturity and immaturity. Immaturity verses maturity, a battle that has been fought since the beginning of time, and teens. In "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Joyce C. Oates brings us to the battle-front of that war. Oates' portrayal of immaturity designs a house of cards, built on a foundation of conceded qualities, resentment, and misguided emotions that inevitably fails.
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.
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
As stated by Foster, “Is that a symbol? Sure, why not,” holds the truth as to how a reader can view different objects or actions as a significant meaning (104). In the short story, “Where Are You Going, Where have you been?”, there are characters that behold obscure relations that apply to symbolism. Usually when an object or action stands out, it attracts a reader to apply a deeper meaning to the subject as to why the author chose to input the factor into their story. Further, “he grinned so broadly his eyes became slits” (Oates 5). The use of a character who presents aggressive actions and sexual appeal to have sex with another, stands for something much greater than just sex. Foster explains that each story has significant symbols to tie in deeper meaning to the story, and as well as how sex can mean much more than an action with someone while it can be a factor with a darker meaning.
Stories have an opportunity to leave the reader with many different impressions. When you look a different characters within the stories the ones that leave the greatest impressions are the ones that tend to scare us. The figures in Bob Dylar’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have you been?”, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”, and Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suite” all instill a bit of fear in the reader. They are symbols that represent the devil or devil like attributes in people and the uncertainties of human nature.
According to the Missouri Child Identification Program, over 2,000 children are reported missing every day and, 74% of them are female; Joyce Carol Oates does not shy away from this fact in the story ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’. 15 year-old Connie suffers from being a teenager as she is rebellious, and wants to be independent. Connie simply abuses her mother’s trust in order to get out of her house and walk around a city filled with dangers like highways, and boys. One of these “boys” tracks Connie down, while she resides alone in her house, and takes advantage of that. Connie remains frightened as the man in the car strongly convinces her to go for a ride with him, and she does, leaving the reader with
In the two short stories “A Worn Path and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates and Eudora Welty are stories of self-determination and free will in both stories the main characters struggle because they want to be themselves. The protagonist in these two stories differ from one and other Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You been” she wants to be herself and she don’t no one to tell her what to do. In the other hand Phoenix has a mission to complete while confronting many challenges. Every day people found challenges that stand in their way to accomplish their mission from dogs, and hunters in the woods to crazy guys in gold cars waiting for you outside but with cheer determination most accomplished their mission.
Connie is your typical 15 year old girl growing up in an American suburb during the 1960s. Moral and social conventions were being challenged during this decade and even issues such as feminism, sexual freedom, and adolescent sexuality were becoming hot topics of controversy. Connie is a good representation of adolescent sexuality. She depicts girls who are growing up too fast and making the transition from being daddy’s little girl into a young woman. Connie spends her time preoccupied in front of the mirror, making herself sexually attractive to get attention from boys. This works for Connie, however, she gets the attention from the wrong boy, Arnold Friend who is much older than she is. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, I believe Arnold represents a fear all young
Have you ever been so focused on achieving your dreams that you become unaware of your current situation? When we focus on the goals ahead of us, we fail to see the obstacles and dangers that are in front of us. In order to achieve our goals we involuntarily put ourselves in an unwanted situation. Connie, herself, struggles to achieve her goal of being a desirable girl that turns heads when she walks into the room. She becomes so set on being this girl that she doesn’t realize the danger of the situation. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates utilizes metaphors, diction, and imagery to show how Connie is in a constant tug between her reality and her dreams, and how this confines her freedoms in a world that is surrounded with malevolence.
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
The most ubiquitous allegory found in the piece is seen in the relationship held between Connie and Arnold Friend, which has a religious nature about it. In the same way that the Devil manipulated and convinced Eve to take the apple, Arnold has a rather cogent way of persuading Connie to leave her house and join him. The “sweet talk” that Arnold employs on Connie is the equivalent to the temptation of the Devil when he lured Eve into taking the apple. Another strong comparison in the aforementioned allegory is the similarities found between the Devil and Arnold. “I know your name and all about you, lots of things” (Oates par. 48). Arnold’s all-knowing perspective of Connie is synonymous to the Devil’s total knowledge of Eve. Oates uses this rather powerful allegory to depict the dangerously unpredictable vulnerability of Connie. By ending the story in the manner in which Oates did, she reveals her resentment for Connie’s vulnerable nature that could have ceased to exist had Connie taken the initiative to establish her