Joyce Carol Oates
An Analysis of Arnold Friend as an Evil Character in Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates presents a description of an adolescent girl's disaffection with her family and rape by Arnold Friend in the short story "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Throughout the story the reader watches Connie, the central character, reject her family, friends and self in an attempt to deny her youth and jump to adulthood. At the climax of the story she encounters Arnold Friend, an older boy, who manipulates Connie's distorted perspective to destroy her world and rape her. "Where are You Going..." is told in the third person by a narrator who is heavily biased toward Connie's perspective. From the opening description of Connie's older sister as "... so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time..." (467) the reader is presented with the narr
His advances begin by complementing Connie on her physical appearance. " Unlike the main character from Boyle's "Greasy Lake", Oats makes no attempt to explain or justify the violence in her story. Having been defeated, Connie obediently leaves the house and in a disembodied manor walks into Arnold Friend's embrace. This villain is not instantly recognized as such, and provides a perfect match for the distorted perspective of the central character. The reader knows Connie becomes aware of this shell through such lines as, "His whole face is a mask"(475) and "Evidently the boots did not go all the way down. The reader is given warning of his importance through his more complete description and the ominous piece of dialogue, "Gonna get you, baby. " Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. She then attempts to seek refuge in her father's house. The reader is already aware that this is central to her self-image through the almost entirely physical descriptions in the first third of the story.
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