Character Analysis Of Connie In 'Where Are You Going'

Evidently, Connie was manipulated by her youthful wild dreams, therefore eventually became blinded by her surroundings at the end. Theme enhances the idea of the story as the character leads herself into a destructive internal journey. The central idea of the story is identified and unifies the moral

Arnold Friend’s layers of deception. Connie’s blindness is the pretext of her loss of innocence

When Connie first hears a car pulling up in her driveway, her attention is immediately directed to her hair and looks. She isn’t concerned as much about who is outside or what they want, but how see will look to them. When she initially sees Arnold she is attracted to his style and car. He is muscular in tight faded jeans and a drives a bright gold jalopy. His image is everything that Connie has fantasized about and can relate to. Arnold is even playing

To begin with, Connie’s an adolescent rebellion, always disobeying, and breaking rules. She believes herself to be the most gorgeous in her family, that all boys are attracted to her, and her life is a fairytale. This causes her to focus on the wrong beliefs, which gets her into danger later. Everyone knows Connie feels the most entitled in her family and this causes her to get into disputes with her mom, or put her in unfavorable comparisons with her sister, June. “June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn’t do a thing, her mind was filled with trashy daydreams” (36). Connie, who is always in her sister’s shadow, can never do anything right in her mother’s eyes. Oates explained, “She spent hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups” (36). Connie would be physically attracted to any boy she set her eyes on, so she adored sneaking into drive-ins with men, and cherished precious time alone with them. Perfect happily ever-after’s and fantasies would always be running through

Adding on to that, Connie’s shortfall that rock music has molded her has come to light when Arnold Friend gives sexual advances to her. Joyce Carol Oates shows this by writing, “It was the same program that was playing inside the house. “Bobby King?” she said. “I listen to him all the time. I think he’s great.” “He’s kind of great,” Connie said reluctantly.” “Listen, that guy’s great. He knows where the action is.” (p.3-para.2). This shows how Connie feels shocked that Arnold was also listening to the same music as she was when she was inside the house last time. Since she was incompetent in realizing how teenagers interpret the music than adult figures, Connie is vulnerable when Arnold threatens her to come to him because of the rock music that is being allotted to teenagers. To sum it up, the sexual song lyrics and the image of rock music that is normally played and embraced in the American culture has influenced Connie, a teenager, physically and mentally; therefore, she is taken advantage of by Arnold because of her immaturity and youth.

Connie’s identity is shown at the end of the story, but who she was at the beginning of the story differs to who she became at the end of the story. To start, Connie was a fifteen year old girl who was beautiful and adventuress, but failed to acknowledge and grasp the idea of a real family. Connie’s family or her mother is not the exact loving and caring mother some people have experienced. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, Connie sated “Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn 't

Yet, she tries and find ways to remember like the good days and reconnect with her daughter in certain scenes. In other scenes Connie's mother is just at Connie's neck sometimes for no reason. They are painting the house and it brings back old memories. Connie and her mom have a moment and her mom tries to give her a hug but Connie pushes it away. Her mom gets upset because she knows if it was anyone else she would have hugged them. Her daughter did not seem to care ethier. Arnold is weird and vicious. She is just a teenage girl and has the same attitude. Arnold is still a creep that wants Connie to be his. He tries to lure her in. The character in both the book and story have the same emotion. The theme in both are the same yet showed differently. They are both based on the same concept

During the conversation between Connie and Arnold Friend, she experiences a dramatic moment so intense that it cannot be avoided or ignored. Her attempt was creating a sexy appearance and fascinating the boys in the local diner delivers as her experiment to analyze new fields as well as a new side of herself. However, until Arnold comes into the story, her expeditions have always been closed into security. She may go into an dark alley with a boy for a short period, but no matter what happens there,

Once Arnold Friend unexpectedly arrives to Connie’s house, “her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it, and she whispered, ‘Christ. Christ,” wondering how bad she looked” (3). Connie thought she recognized the mysterious man in the driver’s seat, the kind of guy she is used to attracting. She saw his hair as

In the same vein, narcissism is another trait that characterizes Connie’s attitude. She obviously has the sophisticated mind-set of a young lady that she pretends to be although she is only an adolescent. It is easy to detect through the story that the protagonist Connie spends all her time acting and protecting her ego. So many passages illustrate that point of view. Connie is a two faced adolescent. She presents to the exterior world the image of a modest and well behaved girl whereas she has in her the hidden quality of sexual flirtation. To describe Connie, Oates mentions, ‘’Connie had long dark hair that drew anyone’s eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she left fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home’’

In the excerpt from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” the author, Joyce Carol Oates, uses literary elements such as the imagery of Connie’s two different sides, and long syntax, to characterize Connie in an ambiguous manner. Connie is your stereotypical girl, one who longs for and dreams about her one true love, but she also has the eager and energetic part of her, and these two opposite characterizations come together to form her personality. For example, in the first paragraph, Oates writes about Connie’s daze in order to portray Connie as someone who longs for someone to care about her but doesn’t want to show it. Using phrases like “dreaming,” “dazed,” “how nice,” “how sweet it always was,” “gentle,” and “the way it was in movies and promised in songs,” Oates carefully begins to characterize Connie as a typical girl,

The movie "Smooth Talk" is based on a short story written by Carol Oates titled "Where are you going, where have you been. " Oates wrote her short story in 1966, a couple years later the short story was transformed into a drama film. The movie "Smooth Talk" is about a 15-year-old girl named Connie, who loved to be admired by young men, until one day that Arnold Friend showed up at her house unexpectedly. Connie Wyatt is a very rebellious young girl who is eager to expose the unknown horizons of her sexuality with older men. Except Connie is many things in spite, and rebelling against herself and her family in order to find herself.

In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? You don’t get a sense of Connie and any of her family members and how the live together, all you get is that her father isn’t involved, her mother is jealous of her looks, and her sister is accepted by her family, though she’s dull compared to Connie. The movie enhances these miniscule explanations of Connie’s family life. It shows how they all used to be so close, and she used to look up to her sister. Also how her mother does sincerely care about her and is worried about what she is getting into. Though it shows the sincere and loving side, it shows also how her mother is very hard on her, calls her rude names, and has crude speculations of her daughter. By showing more into the relationship Connie has with them gives the story more of an understanding of why she breaks out like she does and why she has to live her “double life” with the different clothes, body image, etc.

Physical appearance was one thing that Connie was obsessed with her own. Connie lives a life where she daydreams about boys. Her mother tries to keep her head out of the clouds, telling her ?her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams.?( )

She "[knows] she [is] pretty, and that [is] everything" to her (Oates 337). Connie compares herself to others and recognizes those around her as incredibly flawed. She is quick to judge people she comes in contact with for their imperfections. For example, the first thought of Connie's sister that pops up into her head is that she is "plain and chunky and steady," and that was why "Connie had to hear her praised all of the time"(Oates 337) Connie is hasty to point out her sister's vices, and does not even consider that her sister might be praised because she is deserving of praise. Connie regards herself as better than her sister, so she constructs an excuse as to why her sister receives praise rather than Connie. It's ironic that Connie conceals her weaknesses from herself, yet this superiority complex is a weakness in and of itself. Arnold Friend recognizes Connie's ravenous need to feel superior, and he exploits this by feeding her a false sense of superiority by informing Connie that she's "better than [her family] because not one of them would have [sacrificed themselves] for [her]"(Oates 353).