Analysis Of Joyce Carol Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'

see what he is looking at; she is unable to interpret his opinion of her. Connie only cares about

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates, revolves around two main characters — Connie and Arnold Friend. Connie is a 15 year old girl, the protagonist in the story, who disrespects her family, and tries to act more mature than she actually is. Arnold Friend is the mysterious “villain” figure in the story that places Connie in an unpleasant situation that causes her to question the extent of her maturity. Throughout the short story Arnold pushes Connie’s comfort level, and tries to get her to be adventurous by getting in his car for a ride; however, Connie realizes that she cannot get out of this troubling situation on her own. Even though the characters’ overall personas are different, they both show arrogant tendencies, which serve as both of their greatest weaknesses in the short story.

Connie’s personality portrays her in a very negative way because all she cares about is her looks and boys, which is a common stereotype for women. This results in her mother favoring her older sister June for being a good girl and for not being as conceited as Connie. This also happens to be an archetype because Connie is so in love with herself, and it keeps popping up. She not only loves being the center of attention as well as drawing it to herself, but believes everyone is jealous and wants to be her. She is the way she is because in her mind “She knew she was pretty and that was everything” (Oates 1). Connie lets her looks get to her head and believes that since she’s so pretty she can treat people as if they are below her. For example, a boy from Connie’s school tried to talk to her, but she didn't like him. “It made them feel good to be able to ignore him” (Oates 6). Connie likes to feel as if she’s higher up and that she is better than those around her.

Connie worries about her looks more than anything else, its kind of like an obsession. She enjoys looking at herself in the mirror feeling a sense of satisfaction knowing she is pretty. “Her name was Connie. She was

Why are women idealized only for their body? “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, by Joyce Carol Oates is a fictional short story. Through Oates’ display of feminism, a pedophile seduces a young female to come with him and use her for her body, which reveals society’s expectations of a woman in this time period.

According to birth order, the eldest child is typically considered the most responsible; thus the reason behind the parents desire for Connie to be just like her older sister. As Connie states, “June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn’t do a thing (664).” This constant comparison of what June does, and Connie does not, leads to Connie forming her own, separate identity from her sister. As Bowen’s definition of differentiation of self conveys, “the degree to which one self fuses or merges into another self in close emotional relationships” (200). Therefore, Connie is forming her own differentiation of self because she is seeking to separate herself from what her family believes she should ought to be like. Moreover, as the youngest child, Connie was given more freedom to create her own identity. For instance, she would go shopping with her friend and go to a nearby restaurant to meet older guys. As she stated, about to leave her friend to hang out with Eddie, “She said she did and so she tapped her friend’s arm on her way out – her friend pulled her face up in a brave droll look – and Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way (665).” Thus, Connie tries to create an identity based off of how she believes she should be when around other teenagers. In order for Connie to

At the beginning of the story, Connie displays so much self-confidence and independence that she appears shallow. Connie “knew she was pretty” and thought that “that was everything;” she is only concerned with having the best appearance (323). In other words, Connie does not possess any true values, and she does not view anything else as containing much of any real importance. Not only does she portray shallow characteristics but she also frequently disobeys her parents, showing how her will of taking on a more lenient personality affects her

dependent on the looks that she receives to build up her self confidence. Not only is Connie’s

The 60’s legacies included the period of women rights, which was a whole new ideology for those in America because it stopped the suppression of women’s voices. Furthermore, Oates narrates, “ She cried out, she cried for mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness” (Oates, Page.9), inferring Arnold’s psychological torture of Connie is just as terrifying as the threat of physical harm as well as drastically inferring the control on women prior to the 1960’s. Connie loses the ability to speak for herself, to stand up for herself, making a connection to the days before women’s rights was implanted into society. This loss of speech is felt as an actual physical attack, a kind of death. In the end, the theme of the short story was to go in-depth with the violence portrayed in the society’s cultural shifts and into the betterment of society as changes such as women rights started becoming effective.

This chain of events could have been altered at any moment, however Connie’s attributes caused her to come to this tragic end. In the story, “Where are you going, where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, the main character, Connie, was kidnapped at the end of the story due to her naivety,

It’s a beautiful, sunny, summer Sunday and you’re home alone after having a great time the night before and a car pulls into your driveway. What do you do? Instead of staying inside and waiting until the car eventually leaves, Connie approached the man that would eventually lead to her defeat. Connie is a very insecure character, she goes out wearing things her mother would not approve of to hang out with boys. Arnold is a stalker who preyed on Connie’s insecurities to fulfill his sinister needs. In the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Joyce Carrol Oates uses the characterization of Arnold Friend to foreshadow the grave outcome of her story.

In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” the short story by Joyce Carol Oates, the setting takes place in the suburbs in the 1960’s. During the time period when the story was written, the world was perceived as being more innocent and nobody was as aware of the evil that surrounded them. In the short story, the main character, Connie, spends her summer admiring herself, going out with her friends, and acting way older than her age when she isn’t home. When she comes face to face with her mysterious follower, Arnold Friend, she soon realizes that her way of acting has landed herself into a troublesome situation. The short story is important to read because it shows that even though times have changed, teenagers now still act the way Connie does in the story. Teenagers still sneak around, do things they aren’t supposed to, and have a different personality at home than they do in public.

In Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, the reader becomes increasingly aware of the innate threat that Arnold poses. Oates particularly portrays this through the selection of detail in the encounters between Connie and Arnold, beginning at the drive-in restaurant and again in the following scenes of the short story. These details explicitly express the nature of his character, therefore, allowing the reader to interpret them as foreshadowing.

A short story by Joyce Carol Oates called “Where are you going, where have you been?” reflects the writer’s point of view of the way society looked to women in the sixties. The story takes place in the 1960’s when almost everything reached a turning point at that time. It talks about a teenager who wanted boys’ attention, but she ended up leaving her family house with a stranger. Connie represented most teenage girls, and their destiny at that time. The story can be looked at from many different points of view such as feminist, social, psychological and historical (Purdue (OWL)). The time this story had taken place is what makes it important. The story was written when the feminist movement was established, and the American society

The conventional values American citizens associate with their country create a cultural paradox. Every day, millions of Americans endeavor to articulate the essence of the nation by describing the population as “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” An examination of American history quickly exposes the national pledge as an oath of deceit; a climate of segregation, inequity, and corruption exists at the core of social and political environments. The continuous presence of civil unrest inspires minorities to advocate for change through various movements in the public and private spheres. Historically, the feminist movement of the nineteen sixties marks a major transitional phase for the subaltern population of American women. Advocates of the movement address the various oppressions that continue to exist in American culture; such as issues relating to violence against women, political injustices, reproductive rights, and inequality in the workforce. The subordination of the female sex resulting from the masculine dominance in the public sphere is a central theme in postmodern literature, including Joyce Carol Oates’ publication "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been." In the short story, Oates criticizes the patriarchal culture of American society by characterizing the male roles as oppressors of the female gender.