Summary and Continuation of the story: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” By Joyce Carol Oates

boys to live out her childish delusions of romance and allows herself to be swept away by this

Not every story is 100% original. Many stories are inspired by older stories, fairy tales, archetypes, real life events, etc. There are thousands of stories in the world, so newer stories will likely be like at least a few of them. One such story is “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. In this story, a man who calls himself Arnold Friend tries to victimize another character, who is a 15-year-old girl named Connie. The inspiration for this story is clear. Arnold Friend is very similar to The Big Bad Wolf from 2 different fairy tales, “The Three Little Pigs,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” for various reasons, including threats, acting, and disguises. Evidence of this is interspersed throughout the story.

The abduction of Persephone through Hades mirrors that of Arnold Friend. Joyce Carol Oates, Author of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story with themes that consist of search for self as well as identity. Through the use of imagery, dialogue, and characterization Oates displays similarities between the Greek myth, “Persephone and Demeter” to “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”.

The decisions that you make throughout life can make or break you; you just have to make the right ones. In Joyce Carol Oates story “Where Are Your Going Where Have You Been?”, the main character is Connie. Connie had an older sister but she was nothing like her. Her older sister always pleased her mom, and Connie did not care. Connie and her friend hang out and go to the shopping center or the movies. One day they decided that instead of going to the mall they would go to the diner across the street. She met a boy named Arnold. After that night everything started to spiral down. “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?” demonstrates a teenager who decided to cross the road and become a woman.

How many women and young girls have experienced any form of harassment in their lives either if they innocently provocated it or not? As a matter of fact, we often hear on the news issues that happend, most of the time, to women such as sexual harassment or kidnapping. In Joyce Carol Oates's ''Where are you going, Where have you been?'', innocence comes with serious harassment consequences. This is shown through character, symbol and dialogue.

Connie’s parents ask if she wants to go to a barbecue at her aunt’s house and “Connie said no, she wasn’t interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know just what she thought of it” (484).With her being so young and having no way to protect herself, she should not have stayed home or even been allowed to by her parents. Connie hears a car coming up the driveway, “a car she didn’t know” (484). Even though she does not recognize the car, she goes outside anyway. This is a big mistake that shows her immaturity. Instead of calling her parents to tell them an unknown vehicle is at their house, she decides to go find out herself and let the men know she is home. By the time Connie gets to the phone, Arnold Friend is already threatening her family’s lives and it is too

Mystical voices of unity and liberty filled the youths spirits in the 1960’s, sparking what may have been America’s “golden ages”. For baby boomers, however, the new generation was being poisoned by talks of rebellion and uprising. Joyce Carol Oates, the author of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, begins by introducing Connie, a stereotypical 15 year-old in the 1960’s, who voices the arrogance of the youth. Connie’s passion for glancing at every reflective surface she passes by, her attempts to appear older, and her daydreams of romance devised by music indicates how she believes the world is all a fairytale and how Oates perceives the mindset of minorities. In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

In the short story , “Where are you going, Where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie ends up in a not so fortunate fall due to a great amount of reasons. Throughout the short story, you notice that the main character, Connie, learned the knowledge of good and evil but was forced to experience evil. Connie was young, naive and wasn't exposed to the evil in the world yet. One night when Connie encounters a man by the name of, Arnold Friend, she gets a sense of fear from the beginning to end. From the moment she spoke to Arnold, she realized the sense of devil within him. She couldn’t escape the evil upon her because she couldn’t get a glimpse of good around her. In the story, “Paradise Lost” by John Milton, Eve got the choice of whether

From the short story ‘Where are you going and where have you been’, Connie’s conflicts with her family and efforts to make herself sexually attractive are part of her search for independence. As a teenager, she is dependent on the adults in her life for care and discipline as well as for enabling her social life. Despite the fact that Connie altercation against her family, especially her mom and sister, they constitute the only life she knows. She tries different things with making an attractive appearance and luring young men in the in the local dinner, she is trying to explore the new world and her new side. On the other hand, until Arnold Friend arrives, her life have dependably been swaddled in security. For example, if she would go to

She returns home but while in the car with Arnold she wasn’t aware of what his intentions were. Any teen girl would have plenty thoughts racing through their head, being lost and confused. Going back to the value of family, in Oates’ short story you question Connie's actions. Is this a self sacrifice? Or did she step into the car because of her curiosity? For example, Arnold Friend gives off a bad comment, "You don't want them to get hurt”(Oates 13). She thinks about her family before herself and even if she was upset with her mother and sister she put them first. Another lesson that possibly could have been learned would be Connie’s self admiration foreshadowing her downfall. Due to her being flattered by the attention of someone older she allows him to lure her out the house, “ She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited,”(Oates

In Joyce Carol Oates's short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, the main character, Connie fills her life with bad choices; one of her choices and her endless vanity leads to her death. Connie fills her life with many bad influences and sneaks out late to hang out with older boys. Connies was confronted by a man named Arnold Fiend one night at the restaurant and he said “Gonna get you, baby.” He comes back into her life and seems to be very suspicious, he seems to know a little too much about Connie, more than he should know. Connie is sucked into his trap and is dragged into what becomes her certain death.

In the short story, “ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates and the book, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, there are characters who are products of their time because the two protagonists, Susie Salmon and Connie, from these two stories, are both victims of sexual predators and end up dead. Characterization, setting, and point of view play a role throughout the two stories, as how the girls look and dress impacts how both attract sexual predators. Additionally, the time periods that of the stories are set in are close to each other and both stories have a different point of view but the perspectives are of Connie and Susie.

     Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938 in Lockport, New York. She started writing very young and that the age of fifteen she submitted her first novel, but it was rejected for being 'too dark';. This style of writing is common on many of her works including 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'; Oates graduated from Syracuse University and then went on to get her master's degree from the University of Wisconsin. Oates 'turned much often in her writing to everyday characters, which she often placed in situations that were both psychologically and socially terrifying.'; (Short Stories For Students 258) Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is based on a killer in

such as " I toldja shut up, Ellie," and "your deaf, get a hearing aid,

Connie started to get frightened when Arnold starting saying telling all the things that he knew about her. There was no way he could have known those things because she didn’t know him. “I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where and how long they’re going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and your best girl friend’s name is Betty. Right?,” Arnold said. (157) This to me is where the tone in the story really changed. Eventually in the story Arnold threatens Connie that if she calls the police he is coming in and if she doesn’t come out he is going to do harm to her family. Connie is faced with a huge decision.