Where are you going Where have you been by Joyce Carol Oates: Analysis of Fiction
Perhaps one of the great hallmarks of a great work of fiction is itsability to appear to have been written for the age during which it is beingread, regardless of how far back in time it was written. In other words,Joyce Carol Oates' story might strike a contemporary adolescent or youngadult reader as something timeless. Or rather, although it was writtenduring the 1960's, it seems as if it is quintessentially about today'saverage fifteen-year-old teenage girl. Connie seems to be a perfectBritney Spears wanna-be, disdaining her slightly tubby older sister,refusing to listen to her mother, and glutting herself at the mall in actsconspicuous consumption, and conspicuous, revealing outfits. Yet, incongruously to the modern eye, the background "Story ofOrigins" to Oates' tale locates the short story squarely back in the erawhen it was written, the periods of teenage rebellion of the Beat andhippie generations. (Moser & Johnson 164-165) In such a view, Connie'ssexuality is repressed by her prudish society. Adults like her motherattempt to repress her budding interest in sex, but such an interest isbrought forth by the appearance of the strange Mr. Arnold Friend in his
Rather the boys blend into one face, whenshe falls asleep at night. "(Rubin 166) Such an interpretation, however, belies the fact that it isunlikely a young girl would understand the motivations of an older manwishing to be with and like a child, of an adult wishing to put on a teenidentity, when she so painfully wishes to grow up. He has power over Connie because her sense of adult feminineidentity is so fragile, created with music and rock and roll. (163) But unlike a wolf of ogre, Friend is not mythological in his menacingintensity. Connie has, in essence 'bought' the myththat to be a rebellious young adolescent girl, one must be in love with, orbe attractive to boys. But Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton's suggestionthat "Oates consciously associates Arnold Friend with Bob Dylan" isdifficult to defend, although is true that Connie appears to be happiestwhen she is exposing herself in a sexual fashion. Shelets him into her parent's home, but retreats, not into freedom, but intothe home of her childhood, "she backed away into a place, she had neverseen before, some room she had run inside. ManyConnies walk the streets, feeling that a midriff baring top means that theyare mature, rather than their character. "The whole terrifying episode,"suggests Larry Rubin, echoing Tierce and Crafton, is merely perhaps "adream," a rape fantasy constructed while the girl is "drying her hair. He misreads her standoffishness, not of the fear itactually is, but as the actions of a coquette-another myth he 'buys' into,that no means yes. She constantly looks at herself in mirrors to seeif she is "all right," which is not out of vanity, as her mother accusersher of, but of uncertainty in a self entirely constructed by a falseculture, of makeup and posturing. She does not evenhave a crush on a boy at school. Of the critics catalogued in excerpts after the story,Mark Tierce and John Michael Crafton argue most explicitly for such areading, and as such they go most explicitly awry in their view of Connie.
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