Where Are You Going, Where Have Been?
Joyce Carol Oates's short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" was first published in the literary journal Epoch in 1966. The story is about beginnings and the rites of passage. This work is an illustration of a coming of age story, also known as an initiation story. In such stories, the protagonist undergoes an important rite of passage, transformation, an experience of transition, usually from childhood to adulthood, or from innocence to experience. The story focuses on that turning point, that trial, or the passage from one state to the other.
The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Connie, a pretty girl who is in the middle of a rebellious adolescence. She alienates herself from her family, preferring to spend her time with her friends at the local restaurant looking for boys. She enjoys the popular music of the day and tries to appear older and sophisticated beyond her years when away from her home. "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home -- "Ha, ha, very funny," -- but high pitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet" (Oates, p. 36).
One evening, while riding in a car with a boy named Eddie, Connie notices another boy with shaggy black hair in a gold convertible looking at her. "Gonna get you, baby," (Oates, p.37) he foreshadows. On a Sunday, while her parents are at a picnic at her aunt's house that Connie refused to attend, the boy in the gold convertible drives to her house. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend.
Despite her reservations, Arnold eventually persuades Connie to leave her house and go with him. "Now come out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you're a brave, sweet little girl…" (Oates p. 53).
Connie's leaving the house is described as an almost out of body experience, "She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited" (Oates p.54). Though we never find out exactly who or what Arnold is, he is the catalyst that changes Connie from a child to an adult.
Discussion
Connie has two personalities in this story, one for home and one for anywhere that is not home. This represents the two sides of human nature, good and evil. When she's with her friends, she lets her hair down. She is not guarded in her actions like when she with her mom, who frequently criticizes her and calls her lazy.
Connie is at a crossroads. She has yet to settle in a self that she is comfortable with. She is vulnerable and Arnold Friend is representative of evil, temptation, and sin. He allied with the dark forces.
Connie's rebellion from her family and her desire to enhance her sexuality are part of her search for independence. As a teenager, she is dependent on the adults in her life for care and discipline as well as for enabling her social life. Her friend's father, for example, drives her and her friend to the movie theater.
Though Connie rejects her family, particularly her mother and sister, they are the only life she really knows. Her experiments with creating a sexy appearance and enticing boys in the local diner serve as her attempt to explore new worlds as well as a new side of herself. Until Arnold Friend comes into her life, Connie's investigations into the world of adulthood have always been...
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