FREE ESSAY ON WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

Each of us experiences transitions in our lives. Some of these changes are small, like
moving from one school semester to the next. Other times these changes are major, like
the transition between youth and adulthood. In Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?" the author dramatizes the decisive moment people face when at the
crossroads between the illusions and innocence of youth and the uncertain future.
Joyce Carol Oates' message of life and transitions is best understood when the reader
brings his or her interpretation to meet with the author's intention at a middle ground.
In this story of life passages and crucial events, it is imperative that the reader has a
solid response to Oates' efforts in order to fully comprehend the message. 
The author begins her message with the title of her work, which conveys the idea of
passages of time in life. The phrase where are you going suggests a time in the future,
and the phrase where have you been evokes the past. Oates' message continues through the
plot and characters. 
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been consists of two main focus scenes: the world
Connie thrives in and the day everything in it changes. The story begins by introducing
the reader to Connie (the protagonist) world. The story is written in limited point of
view in the third person. The reader is allowed into the private thoughts of Connie only,
making her the focal point and heroine of the story. The author begins the story with
Connie's life to establish a world we can grow familiar with so we will later feel the
experience of the foundation dropping out. Connie is an attractive fifteen year old girl,
easily recognized by the reader as the epitome of a teenager. Her world is full of rock
and roll music, friends, fun, and fantasy. She spends the summer going to town with
friends, listening to music, and meeting with boys. She and her friends share similar
interests in boys and fun, and would lean together and whisper and laugh secretly (Oates
703) when they gathered together. Like many teens, Connie seemingly lives two lives: one
that her family sees, another that she projects to her peers. Everything about her had
two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home (Oates 703). She
seems to at constant odds with her family, not seeming to have any emotional connection
to them observable to the reader. She lies to her mother and sister about her friends and
where she goes at night. Her relationship with her father is non-existent, as he is
always at work. She considers her family to be an embarrassment when around her friends.
June works at Connie's school and if that weren't bad enough - with her in the same
building (Oates 702), Connie also saw her sister as unattractive. Physical appearances
are important to Connie, and she is fittingly obsessed with her own. 
Connie also lives in a fantasy world. She spends her time daydreaming about boys and
meetings with them. Her mother constantly tries to pull her out of these imaginary
journeys, telling her her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams (Oates 702). Her
image of the world is what she sees behind rose colored glasses of youth. Her involvement
with boys, both real and imagined, were sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and
promised in songs (Oates 705). Their faces blended together in her mind, dissolved into a
single face that was not really a face (Oates 704), making them not real people capable
of anything but figments she could control, figments that prolonged her fantasies. She
never thought about the world beyond her doorstep until the day it came for her. 
The day Arnold Friend pulls up Connie's driveway is the day Connie's world of
youthfulness is invaded with brutal reality. Before Friend actually shows up, Connie has
an experience where she awoke from a dream and hardly knew where she was (Oates 705),
finding her ranch house looking more old and worn and asbestos- covered than she ever
realized before. This is just the beginning of the reality Connie faces that day. Friend
comes to Connie's house, attempting to seduce her into going for a ride with him in his
beat up gold painted jalopy. The location they are actually headed for is ambiguous, both
to the readers and to the characters themselves. Friend himself seems to have no idea
where he is going to take Connie, only that it will be away from her house. It was if the
idea of going . . . . Somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him (Oates 707). The
fact that there is no destination in mind is evidence that the future Connie faces, once
removed from her cocoon of youth, is itself uncertain. Friend eventually succeeds in
luring Connie away from the comfort and protection of her home; the threat of violence to
her family by Friend is the catalyst for her relenting. This is proof of Connie's
changing values, for the reader recognizes that this is the first time Connie has shown
any emotional connection to her family whatsoever. The fact that Friend approaches
Connie's house is crucial to understanding what Connie is experiencing. A house has
connotations to the reader as a sanctuary, a place where a person (in this case Connie)
can be a child protected from the world. Connie's retreating into the house at Friend's
approach and her refusal to fully leave the grounds reveals her desperate attempts to
cling to the safe world she knows. At Friend's threats she backed away from the door . .
. [into] a place she had never seen before, some room she had run inside (Oates 710). She
recognizes things are different outside where Friend inhabits, yet her own house is not
the familiar, protected structure she grew up depending on. In fact, Connie is trapped
somewhere between her childhood home which no longer provides any protection or
familiarity for her and a dangerous future with an adult stranger. Connie has no
innocence to return to, so she makes the choice to go with Friend, the only choice
available to her at that moment. Her leaving the house is symbolic of her leaving that
innocent piece of herself behind. 
Also symbolic of her leaving something behind, in this case her fantasies and illusions,
is her agreement to go with Friend. He brings to a crashing halt all her song-inspired
fantasies of young love. Friend's face is specifically mentioned several times, and he
even sported a round grinning face (Oates 706) on the side of his car. This is a sharp
contrast to the faceless boys of Connie's dreams. It is clear that dreams and realities
are beginning to melt together for Connie. He is hardly the typical romantic hero the
readers and Connie are accustomed to (regardless of whether or not he thinks he is), both
in physical appearance and in mental well-being. He is so old he wears make up to appear
younger. He is short, walking just on the verge of falling over. His attempts to connect
with youth are outdated, from the passe slogan on his car to the way he verbally ran
through all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which one of them was
still in style (Oates 712). He is often confusing to Connie, revealing to her an
imaginary x symbol he proclaims to be his mark as well as a series of numbers that have
no significance to her though he evidently feels they should. He read off the numbers,
33, 19, 17, and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she
didn't think much of it (Oates 706). This reference that Friend makes is from the bible.
By counting backwards, the 33rd section of Judges, Chapter 19, verse 17 says (Souther):
"And the old man lifted up his eyes and saw the wayfarer in the street of the city; and
the old man said to him, Where are you going? And Whence do you come?"(KJC NIV). The
numbers and the symbol are just as meaningless to the readers eye because we are supposed
to feel the disorientation Connie (our protagonist) feels at the invasion of Friend. 
Despite his charming manner, Friend is boldly blunt, especially when talking to Connie
about sex. He uses explicit phrases that turn Connie's fanciful ideas about experiencing
sweet love into a frightening sexual act. He tells her 'I'll come inside you where it's
all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me' (Oates 710). Connie, feeling
increasingly threatened, retreats further into the safety of her home. 
By the time Connie finally steps outside the door of her house, she has completely
disassociated herself from her person as well as everything she had come to know and
trust. She leaves a part of herself in the house as she watched herself . . . as if she
were safe back somewhere . . . watching this body and this head (Oates 713). Even her
heart was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her (Oates 713). When she finally
crosses over into his arms, she is no longer the same Connie she was at the beginning of
this story, her illusions gone and only the unforeseeable future ahead of her. 
Connie is the main character of the story. The story is about her, not the more colorful,
but less prominent Friend. Friend may be the most fascinating character superficially
because his quirks jump out at the reader, but it is too quick a judgment to say the tale
is his. 
A possible interpretation of the character of Friend requires a deep examination that
reveals a stronger explanation: that he is duplicated from sheer realism. The knowledge
he displays, which may at first appear extraordinary, is nothing more than guesswork and
a little spying. What he knows of her family's picnic could easily be explained when we
understand that Arnold has been watching Connie, which he in fact picked her and was
stalking her. He told Connie he had seen [her] . . . and thought, that's the one . . . I
never needed to look anymore (Oates 711). A stalker would likely know when she is to be
alone, and being in a small town he would have no trouble learning of a local picnic her
family might attend. In describing the scene at the picnic, he appears to be searching
for a story, speaking vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way into town
(Oates 709), and the one he gives is one any of us could have made up if we were so
inclined. Connie, in her fear and confusion, believes him to be telling the truth, when
he is likely just making things up and piecing things together with simple psychological
insight. Most teens would think of a square older sister as poor, sad (Oates 709),
therefore he needed no extra perception to deduce that. Friend's mysterious appearance in
Connie's driveway, that he seemed to come from nowhere and belonged nowhere (Oates 709)
is not because he is otherworldly, but rather a dangerous criminal of unknown origins.
Friend's appearance and personality are further proof he is not Satan. Friend, at various
times, feels offended . . . pleased . . . embarrassed (Oates 708) with Connie's responses
to all he is saying. It is probably safe to assume the Prince of Darkness would not feel
personally emotionally wounded or prided by a human's skepticism. His appearance is
downright unattractive, and the powerful Satan, if he was truly attempting to seduce a
girl, would probably choose to make himself attractive to her. To claim Arnold is the
devil incarnate and the story is about him is to quickly make a decision without taking
time to closely examine the facts. 
Another common interpretation of Oates' story is that it is the tale of the sexual
awakening, a girl's realization of the full reality of her sexual nature (Winslow 238)
when she is entering into sexual experience . . . initiation (Winslow 238). Somehow
Friend is the answer to Connie's unuttered call and to her erotic desires (Tierce and
Crafton 724). But reducing the story to a tale of mere sexuality is an oversimplification
that denies the true power of the piece. Analysts contend that the numbers on Friend's
car add up to 69 (Winslow 239), and his verbal threat to her is explicitly sexual
(Winslow 239) in nature. Yet these numbers could mean anything; they could be the age of
himself and his victims, they could be a secret code only he knows. The numbers are not
definitively sexual. Friend's threat to Connie is, on the very basic surface, sexual. But
his imposition on her goes far deeper than that. The story is not about Connie's
innocence only in terms of sexual matters, although that is a part of it. It is about
Connie's youthful incompetence of all things in life. Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been? deals with Connie's interaction with life in all its facets. Consequently, Friend's
invasion of Connie's world is not a purely sexual one, although it does simplify the
story to say so. Friend invades her home property and threatens her family and illusion
of love and life. Her house becomes, as a result of Friend's appearance, nothing but a
cardboard box (Oates 713), and her heart feels solid but we know better (Oates 713). In
short, the place where [she] came from ain't there anymore (Oates 713). Friend tears
apart every foundation that Connie has come to consider as truth, and sex is just a piece
of that. 
The argument of the author herself has a fallacy that forces the reader to question the
validity of her contention. Oates uses Connie to tell of the innocence and fantasies of
youth and how they end in such a brief instant. This is the use of a well-known cliche
that is not always true in all cases. Not all youths have naive fantasies and false
illusions about the world. For example, many children in rough cities learn at a very
young age that life cannot afford you daydreams, and that the world is a tough, unsafe
place. Their youth is based in reality. Also, not all people experience a defining moment
when their past is behind them and the future is ahead. For some people, the transition
between youth and future is a gradual process, moving so slowly that one particular
minute cannot be appropriately designated as more crucial than the others. This fallacy,
while not completely rendering her message invalid, nonetheless constrains the
credibility of her assertion. 
Using a true case of violent crime, Joyce Carol Oates examines how youthful naivete and
fantasy end in a crucial moment just before the uncertain future begins in Where Are You
Going, Where Have You Been. For Connie, that moment came the day Arnold Friend violated
her world. A closer inspection of our own lives would perhaps show us the moment we
ourselves stood between the illusions of our youth and the indefinite future.