Abigail Kaffenberger
Sherbondy
English 111
27 November 2017
Joyce Carol Oates In many of Joyce Carol Oates short stories, she expresses her emotions from dealing with a tragic childhood, and trying to combine the natural world to what it really means. She wanted her stories to feel real by writing about society and people today, that others could connect with.
After reading numerous short stories written by Oates, I believe people can relate and connect with her more emotionally with how she uses real life events become so realistic. Oates was born on June 16, 1983 in Lockport, New York. Her early years were sometimes tough as she grew up on a farm, but that did not stop her from reading and writing. At a young age, Oates developed such a passion for writing and said she could never put a book down. When she got in her teenage years, she received her first typewriter and her parents showered her with unconditional love and support for her choice of a career, as she started writing throughout high school and college. She attended Syracuse University, which she earned a scholarship to, and won the college short story contest. She graduated as valedictorian in 1960 with a degree in English. Oates then started teaching at the University of Detroit in 1961, and then after a couple of
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This short story was dedicated to Bob Dylan and after she had listened to one of his songs, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” This story is solely written based on the serial killer Charles Schmid, who committed three murders alone. In the story, you are first introduced to Connie, who is an ordinary girl who is very boastful and she seems to seek the approval of her peers. She then goes out one night with a boy, when suddenly and guy walks right past her and says “Gonna get you, baby.” She just acted like nothing happened and went on with her
O’Hara was born in Chicago Illinois in 1913. There, she initially lived a happy life as the daughter of strict Catholic parents. She was a beautiful Irish woman with fair skin and dark eyes and hair. Dazzled by jewels and gorgeous clothing, O’Hara fell into the oldest profession. Becoming accustomed to fast money, she left home and went to San Francisco. A few years later in mid-1938 she took what she learned and moved to Hawaii to make money.
To get where she is so far, Candace attended Kent State University where she went through athletic training. Just recently after she finished her major and became certified, she finished up with a masters degree and had a second major of teaching, which gave her the chance to teach while she is at Hoban.
* 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.
Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now being treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family.
O’Connor was born on March 26th, 1930 in Texas. She graduated Stanford University in 1950, where she studied economics. She then received her Bachelors of Law from Stanford Law School. She finished third in her class. After graduating law school she was denied interviews by many law firms solely because she was a woman.
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”
Joyce Carol Oates begins the story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by addressing Connie’s “habit of craning her neck to glace into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (316). This is interesting because when Connie’s personified death, Arnold Friend, arrives honking at her driveway, her very first instinct is to check and see how her looks. This later plays a role when Friend asks if she would like to go for a drive in his topless car where her hair will be blown around. To Connie, “gawking” (316) herself, was a form of making herself feel high and beautiful but she had two sides of doing everything, “one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home,” (317). Linda Wagner
Oates is accused of "producing too much" (676). This story is no different. Her exposition is painstaking. She sets the scene by making the main character and protagonist, Connie, parallel to an average girl in the sixties. Oates' narrator introduces Connie using elements of description which puts emphasis on the vanity of the main character. Connie's mother is quickly introduced and is used by the narrator to reveal how much disdain her mother has for her vanity. The narrator uses the main character's mother to introduce her sister, June. One is led to believe that sibling rivalry is one of the many causes that lead to the demise o...
”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
Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925. Until she graduated in 1945 she was known as Mary Flannery. At this point she felt that Mary Flannery didnt seem suitable, on one occasion she described it as sounding like the name of an Irish washerwoman. From this point on, she was known as just Flannery OConnor. Flannery is most recognized for her short stories but at the same time had great interest in cartooning and drawing. She would paint over any cracks in the walls of her home so that her mother would not cover them up with paintings from relatives. As a student at Georgia State College for women Flannery displayed her interests in art by painting murals on the walls of the student union building. Flannery often accredited her father, Edward OConnor as being one of the first and most important influences in her life. Edward OConnor not only encouraged his daughter to write but to explore her artistic ability as well.
Joyce’s peculiar inspirations lead many to believe that she was looking for some sort of coping mechanism or some one who could relate to what she has experienced in her life. (1) Her inspirations included Edger Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Williams Faulkner, and lastly Flannery O’Conner. These authors wrote about the dark emotional feelings that arose with death a...
To begin, the author uses the experiences of Connie to portray to the readers that this could, in fact, be a trashy daydream. This is shown through the quote “But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent, insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July” (Oates
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Her parents also influenced her because they were “gifted storytellers who taught their children the value of family history and the vitality of language”(Carmean 2). Toni Morrison graduated with honors from Lorain High School. She went to Howard University, where she majored in English Literature. While at Howard, she changed her name from Chloe to Toni. Toni Morrison went to graduate school at Cornell University.
What inspires her to write the story? As I read her biography I concluded that her personal life and experiences. she mentions that she started to write after her husband’s death. Which indicates that she was not allowed to write before and when in the story her husband