Joyce carol oates whereare you going where have you been
Joyce Carol Oates short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" takes up many troubling issues. Connie, the main charcter, who is fifteen exhibits the confusing, often superficial behavior typical of a teenage girl facing the difficult transition from girlhood to womanhood. She is rebellious, vain, self-centered, and deceitful. She is caught between her roles as a daughter, friend, sister, and object of sexual desire, uncertain of which one represents the real her; "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home(426)." She is deeply romantic, as shown by her awareness of popular song lyrics, but she is interested more in the concept of having a boyfriend than the boyfriend himself. Arnold Friend, young Connie's abductor and probable rapist-murderer, displays a satanic identity. Arnold is the incarnation of Connie's unconscious erotic desires and dreams, but in an uncontrollable nightmare form. The whole terrifying episode involving Arnold Friend is itself a dream, a fantasy that Connie falls into on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when she is left alone in the house and decides to spend the entire day drying her hair.First of all, Oates has made the willing suspension of disbelie
She shook her head as if to get awake(428)" Because it is so hot she goes inside and, sitting on the edge of her bed, listens for an hour and a half to rock songs on the radio, "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, breathed in and out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest(428). "Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't help glancing back and there he was still watching her(427)". In the repeated references to rock music in the shopping center she frequents and on the radio "He lifted his friends arm and showed her the little transitor the boy was holding, and now Connie began to hear the music. This is why I say that the short story "Where have You Been, Where Are You Going" is a dream and not actual reality. Sophisticated, yes but only in the most superficial ways, involving the heightening of her physical charms triple-x sex. " As we shall see, that music provides a key link between her dreams and their materialization in Arnold Friend. In conclusion, the rather un-devil-like tribute that Arnold pays Connie as she finally yields to his threats against her family and goes out of the house to him. Oates describes "listening to the music from her radio and the boy's blend perfectly(431)", and indeed Arnold's voice is perceived by Connie as being the same as that of the disc jockey on the radio. f somewhat easier by imparting to her story a dreamlike, unreal atmosphere that makes it possible for the reader to view Connie's scary encounter with Arnold as a dream-vision or "daymare", one in which Connie's intense desire for total sexual experience runs headlong into her fear of such experience. She is making a noble sacrifice, and in her dream she gives herself full credit for it. We should recall that Connie's initial response to her first view of Arnold the night before, in the shopping center, was one of intense sexual excitement; now she discovers how dangerous that excitement can be to her survival as a person. Connie's state of consciousness is being given physical form by her imagination. " This is Arnold driving up, just when the author has described certain physiological sounds and motions that sound suspiciously like those of sleep. Connie's horror at Arnold Friend's direct solicitation "I'll come inside you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me(433). "We ain't leaving until you come with us(432).
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