Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates

At home, she kept to herself. She was very ostracized by her mother, for her mother didn’t like the way Connie acted. She was considered a child—a lazy child stuck in her own thoughts. In Connie’s eyes, her mother never had anything good to say about Connie because her June was always doing something right. Whether it’d be paying bills or cleaning up around the house, June was the praised child. By being put down so much it pushed Connie to isolation, which led her to think more of herself and do nothing but daydream. I think playing the role of the child didn’t bother Connie so much because she was the youngest of everyone; however, what seems to bother her more is how her mother views her. What we later see is that when Connie is being threatened by Arnold, she screams for her mother over the undialed phone which shows how terrified Connie is faced with a real-life

Connie is in fact a vain little girl who knows she is very good looking, she knows she is more so than her mean mother and frumpy sister. “She is vain enough to catch her own reflection in every shiny surface she passes.” (Oates 119) Connie's mom would always hound on her about her faults saying for her to not be so immature and vain, although she heard her mother’s wise words they unfortunately would go in one ear and out the other. Her mother would say to her,

Oates emphases that Connie is in her adolescence, who is trying to transition into thinking like an adult. Connie, who is obsessed with her appearance, is constantly “craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right”(Oates 1). She is starting to

It seems her looking at mirrors reassures her that she is still beautiful. Caldwell, recounts “In many senses Connie is right that (beauty) it is everything, but sees only the positive effects of her prettiness, not the dangers of attracting the wrong attention (par2). The only opinion she seemed to ignore is the opinion of her mother. " Oates depicts, Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into shadowy vision at herself as she was right at that moment"(Par

Where there is desire, there is hope, despair, and struggle. Joyce Carol Oates illustrates animatedly the asphyxiated struggle of desire in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” The story narrates the life of a young girl, named Connie, and her fated and enigmatic confrontation with a strange man. Feeling trapped in her own home with her own family, Connie, a self-conscious and rebellious teenager, tries to figure out a way to identify herself with the world around her. Her desire of escaping the reality fuels her struggle to enter adulthood. Through the physical form of Arnold Friend, who embodies both the hope and the despair in Connie’s struggle, the author metaphorically portrays a vigorous and psychological pressure that Connie has to endure. The story is scripted to allude to the danger of identifying oneself through sexuality in young girls. To better understanding this cryptic story, it is important to follow the psychological processes and conflict of Connie’s character, which help unveil the allegorical meaning of a young girl’s rite of passage through sex.

In the short story “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” both characters, Connie and Arnold, suffer from having dual identities. Connie is an individual who acts completely different outside her home, where she tries to portray an image of being sexually appealing. However, she is the complete opposite within her home, where she hides her sexuality and acts more like the adolescent she really is. Arnold is a mature man, something Connie is looking for in life and this intrigues her. Both characters have trouble with their dual identities, Connie’s leads her to being vulnerable to growing mature in an unpleasant manner by the force of Arnold, while Arnold’s unknown character proves to not be genuine, as Connie brings out his violent nature in her quest to be an independent adult.

Arnold friend finds Connie “cute” (321) and a “pretty girl” (324). So now the reader knows for sure that Connie is very beautiful on the outside. The quote, “I took a special interest in you” that was said by Arnold friend, assures the reader that other characters do find her appealing. Now that the reader knows that Connie is beautiful and that other characters find her pretty, he/she understand why Connie has two personalities. In order to keep getting attention from the other characters she has to keep up a good appearance. Connie’s mother kept comparing her to sister June, “‘Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? How’ve you got your hair fixed-what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk.’ . . .If June’s name was mentioned her mother’s tone was approving, and if Connie’s name was mentioned it was disapproving.” (317, 319) Connie’s mother did not approve of what she does. Connie kept doing things that her mother did not like. Connie did not want to be like her sister, and yet her mother kind of raises her to be like her sister. The reader knows that Connie does not have a good relationship with her sister. The reader start to feel bad for Connie, she has to be like the person she doesn’t like to be approved by her mother. Now the reader can fully understand why she does not have a good relationship with her

In Joyce Carol Oates’s, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, character development is a key element throughout the story. As the main character, Connie is a very dynamic character as the story progresses. In the beginning, Connie is a very vain and frivolous character, giving the reader a negative impression. But, as the story continues, the reader learns about Connie’s indifferent and neglectful family and how popular media raises her, rather than her own family. This leads the reader to understand Connie’s personality better, and how the lack of love from her family makes her like this. By the end, Connie performs a heroic act, in which she saves her family by offering herself

The late 1950s was a time of cultural revolution which had a large influence on the American youth. “As the next decade drew near, issues such as civil rights, war, women 's rights, and the sexual revolution would deeply affect many American teenagers. The conservative family values and morals that predominated in the 1950s were just beginning to be challenged as the decade came to a close” (Moss and Wilson 3). As a result, many teenagers lost the conservative morals of the 1950s and became more independent. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie represents the result of this cultural revolution. Criticized by her mother for her promiscuity, Connie is an independent girl who often hangs out with her friends trying to attract boys. In doing so, she attracts a sexual predator named Arnold Friend who visits her at her home to try to get her to leave with him to presumably rape her. At the end of the story, Connie chooses to go with him. Connie gets into this dangerous situation because of a mistaken belief on her self-worth, the loss of morals by her and the adults in the story, and the influence of the 1960s popular music. Looking at “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” through the historical and feminist lenses, suggests that the story is really about how the misconceptions on self-worth and the diversion of 1960s society from

In the story Oates mentions about Connie that “everything about her has two sides to it” (1), by this Oates means the way Connie would act at home was completely different from the way she would act out in public and with her friends. In Connie’s home setting Connie was a very self-centered character. She believed “she was pretty and that was everything.” (1), Connie may be extremely insecure about herself, considering that she believes her looks are all she has to offer. Connie and her mother’s relationship was not the best. Her mother would continuously point out things Connie would do wrong and would compare Connie to her sister, June. In one

Connie never lived up to standards, mostly when she was set side by side with her older sister. ‘’June

There are some stories that capture the reader’s attention and which keep us riveted from the beginning to the ultimate line of the tale. ‘’Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’’, a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates in 1966, is one of those. Inspired by the mythic song of the phenomenal singer Bob Dylan entitled ‘’It’s all over Now, Baby Blue,’’ the author describes the main character as a 15-year-old girl named ‘’ Connie’’, who is obsessed by her beauty and does not get along with her family. The heroine of the story ‘’Connie,’’ engages in an adolescent rebellion against her entourage by acting to appear older. This increases her vulnerability through the story and at the end

Part of being human is having insecurities—Connie is no different in this respect. She knows she is beautiful but wants the attention of a boy to tell her so. Her insecurity, thereby leading to vanity, is only intensified by the fact that her mother verbally disapproves of her to

The author puts Connie out to be a bad kid but is she really? Yeah, Connie is not the most respectful or well-behaved kid but who is at the age of fifteen. The author shares some instances where Connie does not make the best decisions. The author shares, “She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank cokes…and then down an alley a mile or so away” (Oate’s. 109). The quote shows how Connie put herself in situations that a girl her age should have never been in. The author gives Connie the identity of not being confident in herself when she says, “Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.”

Connie was living a double life and demonstrates this by wearing “a pullover jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home” (Oates 95). She was not necessarily the perfect daughter at home, but she was far worse when she was out with friends. It was evident that she dressed the way she did to get attention from young men. However, she had no idea what type of attention she was going to receive and from who. This appears to be a problem for her because she is completely unprepared for the kind of attention she receives. Connie is merely a young self-absorbed girl who had the “habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right”