¶ … Barn Burning" by William Faulkner and "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" By Joyce Carol Oates are coming of age stories that detail the lives of their adolescent protagonists. These stories reveal the strained relationships that adolescents have with their parents at the juncture of critical identity formation. Both Faulkner and Oates exhibit what Zender calls a "self-consciously ambiguous approach to motive" that creates "a pleasing sense of heightened tension, of thickness of texture, and of multiplicity of perspective" that makes their respective short stories pop and shine. It is the central external conflicts in "Where are you Going, Where Have You Been?" that help drive rich character development in these short stories. These stories show how adolescents, whose mind and identity remain malleable and not completely clarified, react to their primary role models: their parents. It is the conflict between dysfunctional adult and curious child that creates character development in "Barn Burning" and in "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" William Faulkner in "Barn Burning" and Joyce Carol Oates in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," both convey that loitering in the adult world comes with life-changing consequences. This idea is evident when the conflict and characters of each story are examined. The central characters in Joyce Carol Oates' "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" include Connie, a curious, imaginative adolescent and her pedophiliac pursuer, Arnold Friend. Connie dreams of a world beyond the confines of her parents' house. Her conflicts with her mother form the basis...
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