Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” a powerful and fascinating story. This mix is particularly evident in her depiction of both Connie’s and Arnold’s double identities. Connie carefully pulls her sweater down tight when she leaves home: “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home.” Arnold stuffs his boots in order to appear taller and more attractive or perhaps to hide the cloven feet of his satanic self. In Connie’s action, the reader recognizes the adolescent beginning to break away from her family and to test the powers of her emerging sexuality. In Arnold’s, the reader sees the devil’s traditional role as arch-deceiver and seducer. On a still deeper psychological level, Arnold Friend is the subconscious nightmare version of Connie’s waking desires and dreams, erotic love as her sister June might suppose it, not “sweet and gentle” as promised in Bobby King’s songs. Allegorically viewed, Friend brings the vehicle that will lead Connie to the “vast sunlit reaches” of the future, a metaphor that expresses the vagueness of her dreams while also representing an unknown attractive, perilous, and as inevitable as death. …show more content…
Each stage of Arnold Friend’s unmasking and Connie’s resulting terror and growing hysteria is carefully delineated. When Arnold first arrives, Connie cannot decide “if she liked him or if he was just a jerk.” The reader becomes more suspicious than she does as she notices his muscular neck and arms, his “nose long and hawk-like, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.” Gradually, Connie realizes that all the characteristics she “recognizes” in him dress, gestures, the “singsong way he talked” do not come together the way
Throughout “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Arnold Friend is a very intimidating and mysterious character that is hard to figure out. Arnold knows everything about Connie, a teenage girl that he has never met before. He is very persistent with getting Connie to run away from her awful teenage life at home with him. Arnold’s appearance adds even more mystery to who he actually is. Arnold has a roughed up look to him, a secret code painted on his car that can be interpreted as a Bible verse, and he can not stand steady on his feet, because of all of these attributes Arnold appears that he is possibly Satan.
The narrator implies that Arnold Friend is Satan by giving certain clues that the reader can easily deduce. The name that Oates gives to the character is one hint to the reader: “Connie looked away from Friend's smile to the car, which was painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at the name, Arnold Friend. She looked at it for a while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet know” (583). The name “friend” was commonly used by the Protestants to refer to evil or the devil. Moreover, Arnold Friend's appearance also hints that he is Satan: “There were two boys in the car and now she recognizes the driver: he had shaggy, shabby black hair that looked as a crazy wig”(583). The narrator emphasizes the “wig” to make the reader think that he is wearing it for a purpose, which is hide his devil’s horns. Also, the fact that Arnold Friend's eyes are covered is another stragedy use by Oates to confirm the assumption of the diabolic presence: “ He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was it, like holes that were not in shadow but in...
Arnold Spirit Jr. is the social outcast in his world. He’s ignored, bullied, but still an intelligent teen who is unique, given the fact that he was born with more water in his brain. However, that didn’t stand in the way of Junior since he was able to achieve a dream which is a shift in his life that brought joy. Many obstacles such as deaths of family and poverty may have brought him down, but he came back up stronger. While experiencing many changes throughout the book, Arnold Spirit Jr. reshapes the way people looked at him on the reservation, and at his school, and while trying to find out where he belongs, which shows that the desire to fit in is human nature.
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.
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.
...most people trying to put on a show for themselves or for others. Connie was a young individual who thought she knew everything, but was not given the chance to find that out on her own. Some things may have pushed her into the arms of Arnold Friend. For example, it could have been his sharp, repetitive words that Connie made herself believe. Arnold Friend fooled her in the beginning and by making himself appear to be “an old friend” but his interior read “arch fiend”. Arnold Friend is a mythological character that represents the evil that sits in everyone. In some people that evil can burst out like rays of light, like the ones that were described in the story by Connie. Like the expression, “there is a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on the other”, Arnold Friend was Connie's devil.
Doaker- A forty seven year old, tall, patient man that has a lot of respect for others. Even though he caves into people he is still a respectable figure.
Rubin attempts to convey the idea that Connie falls asleep in the sun and has a daydream in which her “…intense desire for total sexual experience runs headlong into her innate fear…” (58); and aspects of the story do seem dream like - for instance the way in which the boys in Connie’s daydreams “…dissolved into a single face…” (210), but the supposition that the entire episode is a dream does not ring true. There are many instances in which Connie perceives the frightening truth quite clearly; she is able to identify the many separate elements of Friend’s persona - “… that slippery friendly smile of his… [and] the singsong way he talked…” (214). But because of the lack of attachment with her own family, and her limited experience in relating deeply to others, “…all of these things did not come together” (214) and Connie is unable to recognize the real danger that Arnold Friend poses until it is too late.
The depiction of Arnold Friend runs parallel to the common conception of the Devil. Many aspects of his outward appearance, as well as his behavior, contribute to this by portraying him in a sinister manner. His nose is "long and hawklike" and he has a "slippery smile." His "greasy" boots don't fit him right, "as if his feet [don't] go all the way down." The stereotypical Beelzebub is often seen with hooves. When he draws 'his sign' – the sinister letter X – in the air, it "stays there, almost still visible," as if he supernaturally burnt it into the air. The numbers appearing on Arnold's car, 33, 19, and 17, exclude the number 18. The 18th letter of the alphabet is "r", and removing that letter from his name presents "an old fiend". Arnold knows about Connie's family, where they are at that moment, and what radio station she is listening to. This can be explained logically by the fact that that he is a stalker. As an allusion, the Devil is omniscient. Arnold also promises not to enter Connie's house unless she picks up the phone. This exemplifies the classic adage, "The Devil won't come into your home until you invite him in." Finally, the fact that Arnold is preying on someone nearly twenty years his junior (physically inferior and easily overpowered) and the methods he uses to finally convince her to come with him (threatening her family and her home) portray him as a genuinely despicable character, worthy of the epithet "Devil," if not its lit...
Connie’s first encounter with her adversary occurs when she sneaks across the highway to a diner instead of going to the movie theater. Arnold Friend is depicted as ‘a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold.’ (Oates 7.46) After Connie glanced over her shoulder at him a second time, Arnold Friend exclaims that he’s “gonna get you, baby”. Connie thinks nothing of it and ignores him. Little did she know that he wanted ...
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.
“Where are you going, where have you been?” Is set in a surbuban American in the 50s and 60s in a world with sexual revolution, yet still fundamentally conservative. In the story only men, never women are seen driving, the model of womanhood is still limited, depicted by the dowdy and domestic June. Things are changing in the world with new honors for young women like Connie. One of the existential themes playing a major role in the story is the choice between right and wrong. Arnold friend comes to the new world but the threat he represents, with violence and control, is a much older one. In the story Connie is living in a fantasy like all other 15 year old
In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” written by Joyce Carol Oats, the writer includes a very interesting character. One of the main characters, Arnold Friend, is a dynamic character due to the sudden changes of this physical appearance and personality. At first he seems charming and a little on the sweet side, but then his dark side starts to show as the story progresses. He first appears when Connie abandons her friend to go with a boy named Eddie. Arnold is seen in his gold convertible Jalopy, which is the first sign that he wants to be alluring. His first words in the story are "Gonna get you, baby" this foreshadows his intentions when it comes to Connie
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
An individual’s personality traits are characteristics and qualities that distinguishes one as distinctive. From the time we are in the womb, we already begin to develop a sense of individuality and achieving what we want to be seen as. An infant who kicks their mother’s stomach since young develop a personality that wants attention, while one who does not may be seen as considerate and calm. However, our personality in nature is not always intact throughout our life. As we grow, we are challenged by our society’s limits and often influenced by our surroundings. Therefore, the way an individual is nurtured will differ from their originally inherent character positively or negatively, and start to act the way they are more comfortable with. Such an example applies to a thirteen year old girl named Bonny. Even though she has some flaws in her character, Bonny is a well- rounded individual that is independent, imaginative, and reliable. Those are some positive traits that she developed as she matured.