The Journey to Adulthood in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates

Connie does not want to be the nice and innocent pretty girl. She wants to be known for being very sexual. In the story she makes fun of her sister June because she is very modest and not sexual and causes conflict with their family. Also June is overweight twenty-four years old and still living at home. But she also does chores and does them without complaining to her parents. While Connie is a way from home she has two totally different ways of acting. Be that as it may, Arnold friend ‘s landing in her home drives her two sides to consolidate fiercely. As it were, Connie is not completely sexual until Arnold's interruption into her home until then; her sexuality was something outside of her "actual" self, the self that she permitted her family to see. Arnold also has a friend named Ellie. While Arnold drives up to Connie’s house Ellie stays in the car and she listens to music while Arnold speaks to Connie. Also Connie’s mother shows a large amount of frustration towards her and the way she acts and dresses. Connie and her mother fight constantly. But towards the end of the story when Connie is attacked my Arnold she cries out to her

She tries to relate to sex through popular music that romanticizes relationships and life. The short reveals how it affects Connie when she is listening to a popular radio station, “…bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless little room” (Oates 424). Additionally, Connie felt her date with Eddie was similar to “the way it was in movies and promised in songs”(Oates 424). She felt she was living the dream and was beginning to relate to this sexualized, romantic media. In Marie Mitchell and Olesen Urbanski’s literary review of the story, they state “the recurring music then, while ostensibly innocuous realistic detail, is in fact, the vehicle of Connie's seduction and because of its intangibility, not immediately recognizable as such” (1). However, Arnold Friend was quick to remind her of her young age and innocence at the end of the story.

Music was a significant part of the story. Oates described “music was always in the background” and that continued from the beginning of the story at the drive-up restaurant until the very end with Arnold’s singing sigh. Oates stated that music “was something to depend on” and that Connie “listened to the music that made everything so good”. Music was Connie’s escape from the real world and way for her to relax like she did on Sunday in the backyard. Music took her to a place she could rely on to daydream about love and the boys she had met in the summer. Her ideas of romance came from the music she listened to and showed how naive she was about love. The music Connie listened to was “hard, fast, shrieking songs” that gave her a “slow-pulsed

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” written by Joyce Carol Oates is an unsettling and incredibly formidable story of a young woman’s loss of innocence during a time of social change and turbulent times. The story’s protagonist is Connie, a self-absorbed, yet beautiful fifteen year old girl, who not only is at odds with her family but also the conservative values handed down by her family. She, unknowing to her parents, spends her evenings exploring her independence and individuality as well as by flirting and picking up boys at a local diner. One evening she catches the attention of a strange, creepy boy who drives a gold, dilapidated convertible. While alone at home one Sunday afternoon, this same creepy boy driving the gold

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 story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, the author, Joyce Carol Oates, digs into the reality of meeting new people and having it go the wrong way. As Connie, the main character, is growing into a beautiful teenager, she wants to explore the

Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York to a Catholic family in 1938. While attending Syracuse University, she won a “Mademoiselle Magazine Award” for fiction. She also graduated with top honors at Syracuse University. After she graduated from Syracuse she received her master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. With this degree, she went on to teach at several universities such as Detroit, Windsor, and Princeton. As a writer, she has produced more than twenty-five collections of stories, and forty novels. Joyce Oates was a winner of a National Book Award in 1970. Some of her novels include “Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990)”, “Black Girl/White Girl (2006)”, “The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007)”, and “A Fair Maiden (2010)”. She writes poetry, plays, and literary criticism as well.

The teenage rebellion, which most of people experience during the puberty, always worsens the relationship between parents and children. Written by Joyce Carol Oates, the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” describes the condition and consequence of a family whose child is rebellious. Through the characterization, plot, and dialogue, Oates successfully exhibits the thesis that Connie’s bad ending is the consequence of her parents’ attitude and actions.

In Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, she paints the picture of a teenage girl whose mother is jealous of her, father is absent, and sister is twenty-four and lives at home. Connie is a fifteen year old girl who sneaks around with her friends, is a bit boy crazy and is very much a daydreaming teenager. The beginning of the story starts off rather innocent, then through a series of hints scattered throughout the story, takes a turn for the worse when Connie’s eyes are opened to a face of evil no girl should ever have to experience and no boy should ever become. Oates reveals how family relationships directly and indirectly affect the way teenagers act and how it impacts their search for self-identity.

The short story written by ,Joyce Carol Oates called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” takes place in the 50’s (possibly earlier/later) in a remote area where a young fifteen year old girl named connie learns she’s not as grown up as she thinks and needs the protection of her family when their safety is threatened.Connie is a wild teenager dressing the part,taking a liking to boys, and disobeying her parents.Her parents try to keep Connie tame using her older sister June as an example of what Connie should be.She has regular conflict with her mother constantly fighting because of her appearance and actions like lying about where she goes, and again her interest in boys trying to protect Connie from getting into trouble at a young age.Connie and her friends regularly go to the “mall” where they sneak across the street to a drive-in restaurant full of kids out of high-school over eighteen.Connie gets more than she bargains for when a man called Arnold Friend notices her and takes

Another thing that plays a big role in Connie’s character are her differing personalities. The Connie that is reserved for when she is at home is sarcastic, distant, and rebellious against her family. The Connie that is reserved for outside is enticing, alluring and sexually appealing to the opposite sex. According to Palo Alto Medical Foundation, a study done by the RAND Corporation shows that “teens are twice as likely to have sex or engage in sexual acts if they see similar sexual behavior in the media” (para. 15). In the sixties, rock and

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

The teenage rebellion, which most of people experience during the puberty, always worsens the relationship between parents and children. Written by Joyce Carol Oates, the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” describes the condition and consequence of a family whose child is rebellious. Through the characterization, plot, and dialogue, Oates successfully exhibits the thesis that Connie’s bad ending is the consequence of her parents’ attitude and actions.

The Transition from Childhood to Adulthood in Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

In a tale that takes one through the events leading up to the horrifying death of a naive teenage girl. The short story written by award winning author Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2015] 487-500) reads as if it should be mandatory research for pre-teens and parents alike. It portrays why parents should be involved in their children’s life, knowing who they are with and what they are doing. The story also explains why young adults exploring their new found freedom still need and should keep their guardians involved in their life.