Joyce Carol Oates got her inspiration for her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” when she heard of a serial killer who would seduce and kill teenage girls. Her short story is about a fifteen year old girl named Connie. Connie is pretty and she knows it, and when she is walking by cars she will stop and look at herself in the mirrors and windows. Connie has an older sister, her name is June. Connie’s mother is constantly comparing her to her sister. “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? … what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk.” (317). The things her mother says hurts Connie’s feelings to the point where she wishes her mother and herself dead just so it would all be over. …show more content…
One for at home with her family, and one for when she is out with her friends looking for guys. She loves that teenage boys and older men find her attractive. When she is not at home she walks and talks in a way to get the boys to notice her. She is trying to act more mature than she really is. She wants people to see her as a mature woman with experience. When in reality she just wants to look pretty for the boys, she has no interest in them perusing her sexually. Connie is a day dreamer and had this whole idea in her head of what romance and adulthood was. She really has no idea what adulthood is like and when the older man started showing her some interest sexually it terrified her. This man at her home was not her idea of romance or adulthood. However, she did not want him to know that. At first she was playing it cool, and she was calm. When the man started saying very sexual things to her it scared her, and she could not hide it. The man had Connie in a place where he knew he could get into her head and make her go with …show more content…
At one point in the story Connie starts feeling very dizzy, and then for a little bit she stops hearing everything around her, as if she is blocking everything out. She can feel her heart pounding except she does not think it is her heart. “She felt her heart pounding. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside a body that wasn’t really hers either.” (332). Her body does not feel like her own anymore. She is no longer herself, and it appears she is no longer with her body. She watches herself leave with Arnold, and what should have been her neighbor’s houses is now a field where she knows he is going to take her. Connie understood something bad was going to happen to her, and she did her best to disassociate from the situation. She did not know if she was going to survive or not, and this was her only way of showing him she was not
First of all, Connie was not happy at home. The story says that her father "was away at work most of the time," and "didn't bother talking much to them," so Connie didn't have love from him and had to find male attention somewhere else. Connie found her happiness in escaping with her friend to the drive-in restaurant and daydreaming about boys. But the happiness she found in both of these things had nothing to do with actual events; it is based on a fantasy. When she was out at the drive-in with a boy, her face gleamed "with the joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music." When she daydreamed about boys, they all "fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling mixed up with the urgent pounding of the music..."
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story that is about a fifteen year old pretty teenager named Connie, who does not get along with her mother and is irritated by her sister. Her sister can do no wrong in her mother's eyes while she is constantly getting criticized. Connie enjoys listening to music, watching movies, and spends a lot of time going out with her best friend and meeting boys. Until one day, a creepy guy, she had seen out one night shows up in her driveway when her family is out. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend and insists that Connie go for a ride with him and threatens to harm her family if she doesn't. In the story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates portrays Arnold Friend as a rapist; he creates the climax of the story in which Connie is taken from her home and family, by him through violent means.
...tomy between reality and dreams quite well throughout her piece. She provides the reader with two ways to experience the story: either as reality or as reality that turns into a nightmare. This dichotomy that Oates creates “allows the reader to escape this story, and allows this story to end” (Hurley 374). The end of the story shows Connie entering the new world of experience, and Oates wants the reader to sense her fear. Oates intricately provides the reader with clues that help see why Connie’s experience with Arnold is just a nightmare. She also allows the reader to see how this nightmare is meant to scare Connie into making the realization that her decisions have consequences. I hope that anyone reading this learns from Connie that not everything we do is good for us, and we have to think about the consequences of our actions, whether good or bad, before we act.
Connie's personality also had two sides to it. The side she displayed at home is mocking and sneering, and the side she displayed in public made her look trashy. It seemed that she didn't know who she was or what she wanted to be. All she let us know is that she wanted "the caress of love," she wanted someone to be "sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs" (Oates 980). This could have been why she did not put up much of a fight at the end and walked straight into Arnold's arms. It seemed almost like this was what she wanted and what she had been dreaming about.
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).
A mysterious car pulled into Connie’s driveway and the driver proceeds to get out of his vehicle, showing that he belonged there, not recognizing the car Connie opens the door to her house and leans out it. “She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door,” (2). Without even knowing who or why this person has come to her house, Connie opens her door and leans out to possible talk to the driver, who would turn out to be Arnold Friend and wants to take her on a “date”. Connie’s ignorance towards Arnold and his arrival almost immediately puts her in a vulnerable state without her even realizing it, this vulnerability would be the first event to foreshadow Connie’s inevitable kidnapping. After greeting and talking to Arnold for a little, he proceeds to ask Connie if she wants to go for a ride in his car. Instead of turning down the offer since she barely, if at all, knew Arnold, Connie somewhat debates it. “Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over her shoulder,” (3). Though she lacks any information about Arnold, Connie kind of debates taking up his offer to go for a ride, further letting her ignorance towards the entire situation usher her into an even more vulnerable
Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" written in the late sixties, reveals several explanations of its plot. The story revolves around a young girl being seduced, kidnapped, raped and then killed. The story is purposely vague and that may lead to different interpretations. Teenage sex is one way to look at it while drug use or the eerie thought that something supernatural may be happening may be another. The story combines elements of what everyone may have experienced as an adolescent mixed with the unexpected dangers of vanity, drugs, music and trust at an early age. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to choose what the real meaning of this story is. At one point or another one has encountered, either through personal experience or through observation, a teenager who believes that the world is plotting against them. The angst of older siblings, peer pressure set upon them by their friends, the need for individualism, and the false pretense that at fifteen years of age, they are grown are all factors which affect the main character in this story.
”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
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.
Where Are You Going, Where have you been? is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The 75 year old American author and professor at Princeton University, introduce the story of 15 year old Connie who is rebelling against her mother’s whishes. A very arrogant and selfish girl that in her world the only thing that matters is how many heads she can turn when walking into a room. Through the story life gives her a test, to confront Arnold Friend, the antagonist of the story; who possesses a nefarious power beyond her own experience.
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 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.
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
Connie has the need to be viewed as older and as more mature than she really is, all the while still displaying childlike behavior. She shows this childlike behavior by “craning her neck to glance in mirrors [and] checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates 323). This shows that Connie is very insecure and needs other people’s approval. Although on one side she is very childish, on the other side she has a strong desire to be treated like an adult. This longing for adulthood is part of her coming of age, and is demonstrated by her going out to “bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant[s]” and meeting boys, staying out with those boys for three hours at a time, and lying to her parents about where she has been and who she has been with (Oates 325, 326). “Everything about her ha[s] two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 324). Even her physical movements represent her two-sided nature: “her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearin...
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