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Analysis of Joyce Carol Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 26, 2022

Probably the most gifted—and certainly the most prolific—literary talent of the second half of the 20th century, Joyce Carol Oates continues to be prolific into the 21st century. She has published more than 50 books; won the National Book Award for Them, her novel published in 1969; received countless O. Henry Memorial Award citations; and has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Prize. Her most widely anthologized short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a chilling modern fable that uncovers the bleakness and emptiness of contemporary life and values. The story has become an American classic.

Oates’s grimly realistic portrayal of Connie, her adolescent protagonist, reveals the falsity of the Cinderella myth and the romantic stories on which young girls are raised. Connie, the rebellious teenager, is bored with and alienated from her middle-class family, preferring instead to spend her spare time trying on makeup, listening to rock and roll, and cruising through the shopping mall with her friends. At the mall she meets a sinister character named Arnold Friend.. Oates uses Magic Realism to suggest that Arnold is not all he appears to be; indeed, her third-person narrator suggests that he is not only obscene and slightly out of place but everywhere, knowing everything; in fact, he may be the devil himself, an identity many critics see inherent in his stumbling walk and his inability to balance in his boots: Cloven hooves may be the source of his difficulties.

© Dustin Cohan

When Arnold visits Connie at her house, he knows that her family is away and threatens to cause harm to them if she does not accompany him. Like the devil’s, his goal is to have Connie go to him of her own free will. Oates’s memorable building of suspense and horror is evident in the insubstantial screen door that separates Connie from Arnold and the insistently ringing phone, which Connie is powerless to answer or, later, to use to call the police. Volitionless, Connie moves toward Arnold as in a nightmare, and the final wording of the story suggests he will not only rape her in this world but take her with him to hell, whether biblical or earthly. In the pessimistic ending, the reader understands that Connie is gone forever and that her culture never prepared her to resist evil.

The title is from a line of a Bob Dylan song, and the story positions Connie in both the new world of rock and roll—presided over by the disk jockey Bobby King, a replacement for an earlier spiritual “king”— and the ancient world of the demon lover who spirits away his unresisting victim. The frightening contemporary parable that Oates has created resonates with the reader in deeply disturbing ways. The story was filmed in 1986 with the title Smooth Talk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bastian, Katherine. Oates’s Short Stories: Between Tradition and Innovation. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1983. Friedman, Ellen G. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Ungar, 1980. Norman, Torberg. Isolation and Contact: A Study of Character Relationships in Oates’s Short Stories, 1963–1980. G teborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1984. Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Stories of Young America. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1974. Wagner-Martin, Linda. Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979.

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A Summary and Analysis of Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is a 1966 short story by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. It is regarded by many critics as Oates’ best story, and is widely studied and praised for its treatment of some of the darker aspects of early 1960s America.

First published in the literary journal Epoch in 1966, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ was inspired by a series of real-life murders and dedicated to Bob Dylan, whose song ‘ It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue ’ was another inspiration on the story.

Plot summary

The story is about a rather rebellious fifteen-year-old girl named Connie, whose mother constantly berates her for obsessing over her appearance and not being more sensible like her older sister, the rather plain-looking June. Connie often goes and hangs out at a drive-in restaurant with her friend Betty, and one evening she is befriended by an older guy, named Eddie, who has a car.

After she spends a few hours with him he takes her back to her friend and then she goes home. To keep her mother from suspecting about such behaviour, Connie tries to present a different self at home, pretending to be more ‘steady’ and sensible than she actually is.

The next day is a hot July day, a Sunday, and the rest of the family go to Connie’s aunt’s for a barbecue, but Connie declines to go and so is left home on her own. While she is sitting in the sun outside the house, a car drives up and two older men, who call themselves Arnold Friend and Ellie Oscar, try to persuade her to come for a drive with them.

Although Connie doesn’t know them, there is something familiar about the appearance of Arnold, and he knows her name. Then she remembers she had seen him at the restaurant the night before.

Connie is reluctant to go for a drive with them, and is suspicious when Arnold reveals how much he knows about her life and friends. He claims to be the same age as her, but when she expresses incredulity, he claims to be a little older: eighteen. When she catches a glimpse of Ellie, who is listening to music inside the car, she realises that he is also much older, and has the face of an immature forty-year-old man.

Arnold becomes more persistent and intense in his desire for her, but that only makes Connie more nervous and suspicious, until she threatens to call the police.

Arnold agrees not to come into the house, where Connie has retreated while she talks to him. However, he threatens her, suggesting that something will happen to her ‘people’ if she doesn’t come with him. He repeatedly encourages her to come with him so he can show her what ‘love’ really is.

Although she goes to phone somebody, Connie is talked out of doing so and eventually agrees to come out of the house and go with Arnold and Ellie in the car. The story ends with her glimpsing at the sunlit land behind Arnold which stretches out like an unknown new land, a land she is heading towards.

Joyce Carol Oates was inspired to write this story after she read an account in Life magazine of a young man who had managed to entice and then kill several young girls in Tucson, Arizona in the early 1960s.

However, the ultimate fate of fifteen-year-old Connie is left open for interpretation at the end of ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’, and thus the story becomes almost a modern myth about the rite of passage of adolescence, crossing from the safety (and oppressiveness) of childhood towards the broad, ‘sunlit’ (but also dangerous and unnerving) lands of adulthood.

In this connection, the story’s title points up the threshold on which Connie stands, looking back to where she has been (childhood) and where she is going (adulthood). Oates reinforces this liminal status of Connie by having her literally spend most of the story on or near an actual threshold: the door of her parents’ house.

The ‘two sides’ to Connie’s identity which the third-person narrator of the story mentions early on are also significant here: she is caught between being daughter at home and free-spirited woman (or woman-in-waiting) outside of the family home. Once again, the boundary or threshold between ‘home’ and ‘not home’ (to use the narrator’s words) is marked with significance.

The meaning of that title, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’, is hinted at again towards the end of the story, when Arnold Friend tells Connie that the place she came from doesn’t exist any longer, and where she had intended to go is also no longer an option. Her father’s house is something he can easily destroy (an allusion to the Big Bad Wolf from the famous children’s tale about the three little pigs).

But it is not clear what he means by stating to her that where she ‘meant to go’ is no longer an option for her. Arnold – whose very surname signals his (supposed) identity as her friend rather than her foe, but in a way that perhaps underscores too heavily, and suspiciously, his so-called ‘friendly’ nature – paints himself as someone who has arrived in her life in order to help her across this threshold towards a new land she could not find alone, or that she would be unwilling to embrace without encouragement.

It is important that the decision to cross the threshold at least be made to  look  like her own, even if it is only the result of extensive coercion.

The mysterious origins of Arnold and Ellie, and the extent of Arnold’s knowledge of Connie and her family – he even claims to be able to ‘see’ what is going on at the family barbecue across town – suggest that the two men are almost supernatural visitants who possess more symbolic and mythic force than they do existence as real people.

It is as if Arnold is a variation on the incubus , the male demon supposed to visit sleeping women and have sex with them, but a modern-day incarnation of this figure, in tight jeans and sunglasses. Alternatively, we might even regard Arnold Friend as a devil in disguise: F riend  is only one letter away from Fiend .

All of this is not to suggest that ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is literally a tale of the supernatural. It is a realist story with dialogue and characterisation which reinforce the authenticity of the characters, who operate in a world familiar to us as our own.

But the symbolism of Arnold Friend is nevertheless of a mythic kind: he seems to represent all young men who are viewed by teenage girls as their induction into the world of adult relationships, including the realities of sexual intercourse and the dangers that can pose (not least to teenage girls in the 1960s).

Connie’s age is also significant: at fifteen she is legally still very much a child, although her body is obviously changing and maturing, her hormones giving her mixed signals about what she wants. Early in the story, Oates’ narrator implies that Connie is more in love with the idea of having a boyfriend than anything else: all the boys she has met, we are told, ‘dissolved’ into a single face that was more an idea than a real person.

And in this regard, Connie’s encounter with Eddie the evening before the arrival of Arnold and Ellie (whose name even echoes Eddie’s) acts as a symbolic foreshadowing of the events that follow on the Sunday: it is as if Connie is now ‘ready’ to be tempted by the strange devilish figure who arrives on her parents’ front drive, and here the fact that both Eddie and Arnold arrive in cars, a symbol of adulthood and independence, is of significance.

In the last analysis, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is a powerful – one might almost say archetypal – exploration of the confusion, uncertainty, and hesitation that attend on adolescence, as young people, and especially young girls in this regard, negotiate the difficult path from girlhood to womanhood.

We might call this ‘rite of passage’ or ‘coming of age’, but Oates’ story, given the dark true events that inspired it, is unsettling because it implies that coercion and threats are not only usual but perhaps even necessary, at least in a patriarchal society, to wrest indecisive young girls over that threshold.

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Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

by Joyce Carol Oates

Where are you going, where have you been study guide.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is perhaps Joyce Carol Oates most widely read and anthologized short story, and, as one critic wrote, “justly so” (Gale 257). First published in the 1996 edition of the journal Epoch and later reprinted in the 1970 short-story collection The Wheel of Love , the story has remained a critical and reader favorite. Literary scholar G.F. Waller has called it “one of the masterpieces of the genre” (Gale 257). In 1986, director Joyce Chopra adapted “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” for the big screen, translating the perennially popular story into Smooth Talk , a well-received film. Even Oates herself, in a 1982 interview, admitted that among hundreds of short-stories, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” remained one of her favorites (Sjoberg 284).

In the story, Arnold Friend , an older man in teenage garb, arrives at the home of Connie , a 15-year-old girl on the cusp of adulthood, to convince her to come for a ride in his golden car. When Connie refuses, Arnold Friend becomes aggressive, using manipulation and threats to force her to submit. The nature of Arnold Friend’s true identity remains ambiguous throughout the story and has encouraged broad critical speculation. The most popular interpretation holds that the story’s villain is the devil or death in disguise. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” Joyce Carol Oates explores the cultural upheaval of mid-century America as well as themes of identity, will, and independence.

Inspiration for the story has come from a diffuse array of sources. Oates has always been “fascinated” by “the predicament of the young and of women;” as a young woman Connie’s character would easily fall within the author’s broader interests (Sjoberg 273). More specifically, Arnold Friend’s character was inspired by Charles Schmid, a man known as the Pied Piper of Tucson for his seduction and murder of several teenage girls (Oates). The structure of the story was influenced by Western European folk-tales about Death and the Maiden , where death personified seduces a young woman. Oates wrote that the story’s original title was in fact “Death and the Maiden,” but that she ultimately thought it “too explicit” (Oates). Finally, the tone and mood of the story were inspired by the 1965 Bob Dylan song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” which Oates once called “hauntingly elegiac” (Oates).

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Arnold Friend, the story’s primary antagonist, is a strange and ambiguous character. Theorized to be a devil and a savior, a very real psychopath and a supernatural being, Arnold Friend’s identity is unclear. While Connie’s character is rooted in...

“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

This is only a short answer space. I think that you might consider there might be more read into this story than perhaps the author intended.

What is the significance of the line, “…and they don’t know one thing about you and never did and honey you’re better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you.”

Arnold is using what he knows about Connie's family to manipulate her. He does have a point, Connie's family doesn't seem to appreciate her why should she protect them?

Study Guide for Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? study guide contains a biography of Joyce Carol Oates, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of the short story Where are You Going, Where Have You Been.

• About Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
• Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Summary
• Character List

Essays for Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of the short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates.

• Women's Evolving Role in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
• The Death of the Maiden Motif in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" and "The Story of an Hour"
• Joyce Carol Oates and Sowing Wild Oats: Context for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
• A Fiend in Disguise in Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
• Femininity and the Transition to Adulthood in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”

Wikipedia Entries for Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

• Introduction

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Joyce carol oates, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

Nov. 17, 2020

Caroline Cochrane

“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates was first published in 1966 in the Epoch Magazine . In this story, A young girl named Connie strives to be nothing like her mother. She does everything she can to rebel against what she fears is her fate, so she frequently crosses the boundaries set for her to meet boys and experience what she feels is the life she deserves. She crosses paths with Arnold Friend, a figure who poses as the ideal boy to a young girl who puts value in superficial objects. He tracks her down and corners her when she is home alone. Sadly, Connie fails to realize his disingenuity until it is too late. She tries and fails to escape him, leaving her victim as he drives her far away with plans to take her innocence and possibly her life. In “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”, Joyce Carol Oates presents a perturbing point of view on beauty versus reality that criticizes superficial culture and misguided youthful pursuits of love and sex.

Early in the story, it is made clear to the audience that Connie is extremely conceited and places much importance on the outer beauty of a person. Connie is gazing at herself in the mirror when her mother criticizes her and snaps, “You think you so pretty? (1)” To fully disclose exactly how Connie viewed this particular issue, Oates disclosed that “she knew she was pretty and that was everything.(1)” This particular phrase is vital to understanding how Connie has defined her own personal value and how she compares others to herself. Connie frequently makes statements regarding how ugly she thinks her mother and sister are and how she pities

them. With this perceived lack of beauty, Connie also criticizes their simple lifestyle, in which June, her sister, works at the local high school and has yet to find a long-term partner, or even a short-term one. Connie sees her mother’s life as wasted potential, as she claims that her mother was beautiful when she was young but is not anymore. It is clear that little other factors than outer beauty drive Connie’s judgments of other people. This is what ultimately dooms her fate to the palms of Arnold Friend.

When she first hears the tires of his car on her driveway, her initial reaction is described by Oates as the following: “Her heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it, and she whispered, ’Christ. Christ,’ wondering how bad she looked. (4)” This reaction is not the typical reaction a teenage girl would have to a strange car pulling up to the house unexpectedly. Typically, there would be some element of fear and aversion to coming into contact with the person, but this is the opposite for Connie. Even when she opens the front door and realizes that she does not recognize the car or the people in it, she intentionally flirts with Arnold Friend even before she has fully evaluated whether or not she should trust him. She sees a young, conventionally attractive boy who appeals to her value system, so she bites, not knowing that his appearance is only bait, and as he gets closer, his outer beauty ceases to exist. He is revealed to be much older and is wearing over-the-top makeup to conceal his age. Because Connie trusted his youthful persona, it was too late before she realized that she was wrong.

This story is told in the third person but is limited to Connie’s point of view. The reader is made very familiar with Connie’s tricks to doing what she wants. Connie devises a plan where she can convince her parents and her friend’s parents that she is a sweet innocent girl, but in reality is using this false narrative to sneak off and make-out with boys in a fast-food restaurant parking lot. It is implied that she pulls off this plan frequently over the summer with a different boy every time. When she stays home from a family barbeque,

“Connie sat with her eyes closed

in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs. (3)“

Through this passage, Oates is conveying that Connie uses music and entertainment media to fabricate romantic fantasies instead of creating her own ideas of how love should be. To further this point, Oates also includes this sentence in the paragraph before: “all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July.(p.3)” Through these statements, it is clear that Connie is exploring her sexuality as if she is chasing a specific feeling, perhaps love, but evading any kind of commitment or responsibility involved in a relationship.

This type of sexual exploration was a great source of controversy in the 1960s. short-term and informal sexual affairs were more openly explored and this was met with great pushback from the more traditional members of society. In this short story, Oates is criticizing these pursuits by portraying Connie’s experiences as naive and childish. She emphasizes that Connie is only chasing the feelings that are accentuated in music and other art forms. To show the influence of music on Connie, she presents multiple scenarios where Connie is overcome by song. One scenario in particular that demonstrates Oates’ perception of the music Connie listens to is when “She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half to a program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking songs she sang along with.(p.3)” From the word choice in this sentence, Oates is making the statement that Connie is completely overcome with this music that Oates perceives as chaotic and unpleasant, judging by her description of hard, fast, and shrieking. The music playing is later revealed to be Bobby King songs, which are famous for being overtly sexual and appeal to the exact fantasy that Connie holds all of her sexual encounters to. Oates’ emphasis on the specific influence of music on the sexual environment surrounding this time and how such a perspective on sex can be dangerous reveals perhaps the purpose of this story: to criticize the sexual culture of the time and warn the youth of the dangers that could be lurking behind these fantasies.

In the early 1960s, a serial Killer in Tucson, Arizona emerged: Charles Schmid. He killed three teen girls in the span of one year. His first murder, that of Alleen Rowe, has a significant correlation to this short story and is widely regarded as Oates’ inspiration. Alleen Rowe was lured from her home to the desert where she was raped and murdered. Charles Schmid also has a disturbing correlation to Arnold Friend. Schmid was recalled to have dyed his hair black, used makeup to alter his appearance, and stuffed his boots with newspapers and crushed cans to appear taller. Connie observed that Arnold Friend wore mascara, a black wig, and seemed to be unable to walk properly in his boots. These correlations make the claim that Charles Schmid being the inspiration for this story almost undeniable. This connection adds to the significance that this story held when it was first published. Not only does it tackle the social/ethical dilemma surrounding sex culture, but it also references a fresh, real-life scenario in which a young girl is killed for being involved in the behaviors that are being criticized. Such a raw issue would have been highly emotional and disturbing for readers in the 1960’s. Even in the modern-day, this story has a profound effect on those who read it, especially young women. “Where are you going? Where Have You Been?” draws upon the fears of young girls that they will end up in the same situation as Connie, vulnerable, exploited, and alone as they are led to the final moments of their lives. Stories such as this one are told constantly as cautionary tales to daughters from mothers in an attempt to scare them into safety, which is what Joyce Carol Oates seems to be doing to the youth of the 1960s.

Joyce Carol Oates uses a retelling of a real-life story as a means to draw criticism upon the sexual revolution of the youth of her time and the false perception that superficial belongings and beauty reflect on a person’s value and character. Using references to popular culture and topical issues of the time, she is able to convey such a point of view. Through her highly specific detailing she is ultimately able to deeply disturb and terrify the reader into at least temporarily agreeing with her views on the potential dangers of a superficial, sexual culture that put young women at risk of being harmed by what most consider to be forces of evil, serial killers. She forewarns the readers that if they allow outer beauty to act as an indication of trustworthiness, they will be taken advantage of.

Works Cited

“Attractive and Unattractive Faces with a Marquardt Mask Overlay.” What Averaged Face Photographs Reveal About Human Beauty , 2013, petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-photographs-reveal-about-human-beauty/.

“Caucasian Mother Arguing with Daughter – Stock Photo.” Getty Images , www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/caucasian-mother-arguing-with-daughter-royalty-free-image/573103239 .

“Charles Schmid.” Charles Schmid, “The Pied Piper of Tucson” Serial Killer , 2015, www.bizarrepedia.com/charles-schmid-the-pied-piper-of-tucson/.

“Cover of WAYGWHYB.” Google Image Search , www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fbooks%2F1361846692i%2F397334._UY322_SS322_.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fbook%2Fshow%2F397334.Where_Are_You_Going_Where_Have_You_Been_&tbnid=cBHDMFuS2N4xbM&vet=12ahUKEwjOz6mrw-rsAhXRB1MKHTcYC1wQMygXegUIARDTAQ..i&docid=AB44zSfTLC8yLM&w=322&h=322&q=joyce%20Carol%20oates%2060s&ved=2ahUKEwjOz6mrw-rsAhXRB1MKHTcYC1wQMygXegUIARDTAQ .

Grossman, Emily. “School Secretary Monica Martinez Was Highly Spirited Back in High School.” The Roar , 5 Nov. 2015, scroar.net/1920/recent/school-secretary-monica-martinez-was-highly-spirited-back-in-high-school/.

Huskey, Lynelle, director. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” . Youtube , 2020, youtu.be/jSZs2sDX0Mg.

KHAIRALLA, ROFIDA. Coolidge Examiner , 2018, www.pinalcentral.com/coolidge_examiner/news/book-details-pied-piper-of-tucson-serial-killer-passage-through-coolidge/article_b3e0bf1a-920d-5038-be33-fa69e6d81163.html.

“Lonely 60s Girl.” 8tracks , petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-photographs-reveal-about-human-beauty/.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” Centricity PDF , 10 Mar. 2003, 9:13 AM, www.cusd200.org/cms/lib/IL01001538/Centricity/Domain/361/oates_going.pdf.

“Picture of Joyce Carol Oates.” Google Image Search , – https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F_mWff9DstfQE%2FSfYV1mt4FaI%2FAAAAAAAAAI4%2FhZOE5yRAkYs%2Fs400%2FJCO1.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fthe-sphinx-without-a-secret.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F04%2F31-joyce-carol-oates-where-are-you.html&tbnid=w581vFM1G0q_XM&vet=12ahUKEwjOz6mrw-rsAhXRB1MKHTcYC1wQMygDegUIARCpAQ..i&docid=I3m-wov0N4wgwM&w=230&h=321&q=joyce%20Carol%20oates%2060s&ved=2ahUKEwjOz6mrw-rsAhXRB1MKHTcYC1wQMygDegUIARCpAQ .

Smith, Katie Bingham. “Girl with Boombox.” Are Your Kids Bored? Tell Them What We Did During Summer in the 80s , 2019, grownandflown.com/teens-bored-80s-summer/.

“Sullen Young Woman in a Car – Stock Photo.” Getty Images , – https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/sullen-young-woman-in-a-car-royalty-free-image/1283300771.

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“Teenage Girl Applying Mascara – Stock Photo.” Getty Images , – https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-girl-applying-mascara-royalty-free-image/119014428.

Wells, Mary Louise. “Charles Schmid Arrested.” The Pied Piper and Bob Dylan – Context for “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” 2020, teacherpress.ocps.net/wellsml/the-pied-piper-and-bob-dylan-context-for-where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been/.

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Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

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Summary and Study Guide

Summary: “where are you going, where have you been”.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a literary short story first published in the 1966 Fall edition of Epoch Magazine by the American author Joyce Carol Oates. Originally titled “Death And The Maiden,” Oates was inspired to write the story when she read an article in LIFE magazine titled “The Pied Piper of Tucson” regarding three murders in Arizona. Despite this startling real-world source of inspiration, the story’s dedication reads: “for Bob Dylan.” Oates later explained that Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, gave her further inspiration for the tale. This guide is based on the 2021 Kindle Edition of High Lonesome , featuring “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” 

Connie is a 15-year-old girl who is vain and overly concerned with her looks. When her mother suggests that she should not be so preoccupied with her reflection in the mirror, Connie dismisses her mother as a woman who was once pretty but is now aged and far less attractive. Although Connie seems to hold her older sister June to these high standards, stating that she is “so plain and chunky and steady” (249), she knows that her animosity toward her sister is a performance encouraged by her mother’s fickle affections.

On a summer night, Connie and her friend Betty hurry across a divided highway to a drive-in burger shop where Connie and her friend ignore or meet with boys from school. They sit at the counter a while and enjoy the music until a boy named Eddie comes for Connie. Connie excuses herself from Betty, telling her that she will meet her across the way at 11 p.m. As she navigates the parking lot with Eddie, Connie briefly glimpses Arnold Friend , a man with messy dark hair sitting inside of a gold car who smiles and tells her, “Gonna get you, baby” (251). Connie spends three hours with Eddie, has sex with him in an alley, and meets with Betty again outside of the movie theatre.

As her summer break continues, Connie easily eludes her aloof mother and father’s vague interest in her life. She goes out a few more times, meeting other boys whom she spends time daydreaming about, although in Connie’s mind they “fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music” (252). On a Sunday morning, Connie wakes up late, refusing to go with her family to her aunt’s cookout. Instead, Connie washes her hair and lounges in the sun, allowing it to dry. To Connie, the heat reminds her of the warm caresses of boys she has been with, and when she opens her eyes again, she seems not to realize where she is. Her backyard seems to have grown so that she scarcely recognizes it: “[W]hen she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the backyard ran off into weeds and a fencelike line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still” (253). In her room, Connie listens to the radio, and the heat of the day and the music lulls her to sleep. 

Later, the sound of a car driving up the driveway startles her awake. Connie checks her hair and hurries downstairs to meet the car, stopping behind her screen as she recognizes the man she met at the drive-in, Arnold Friend. Arnold does most of the talking, reminding her that he told her he was to take her for a drive. When Connie reminds him that she does not know him, Arnold introduces himself more formally by indicating the name emblazoned on the side of his car beside a big smiling face that looked like a pumpkin to Connie: “ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a round, grinning face” (255). There is another man in the car with him named Ellie, who seems in a daze as he listens to music from his transistor radio—the same music Connie had been listening to on her radio in the house. When Arnold asks for Connie to take a ride with them, she says that she has things to do. Arnold laughs and tells her that he knows her name and “all about you, lots of things” (257). He also tells her he knows that her parents are gone, and he knows the name of her friend and others from her circle. He asks her why she is being so difficult and whether she remembers him making his sign in the air when she passed the night they met. When she asks, “What sign?” he replies, “‘My sign.’ And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her...After his hand fell back to his side the X was still in the air, almost visible” (258).

As Arnold continues to try to convince Connie to take a ride with him, she notices peculiarities that make her hesitate. Among them is the alarming fact that Arnold knows her name. His golden car is a curio in itself, painted with numbers that Arnold Friend proudly explains is a “secret code”: “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” (255). Also emblazoned on the car is the phrase: “MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS” (258), which Connie considers to be a distinctly outdated term amongst kids her age. Arnold seems to be leaning on the car for balance. This and the makeup he applied but did not blend into the skin of his neck leads Connie to believe that Arnold Friend is much older than she is. When she asks his age, he tells her that he is 18, but Connie thinks he and Ellie are likely in their thirties or older. This sends Connie into a quiet panic.

Connie lies to Arnold, telling him that although she is alone her father is coming back, and he had only left her so that she could wash her hair. Arnold tells her that her family is at a cookout, eating hot dogs and corn. Connie begins to feel dizzy at Arnold’s supernatural insight, but he continues to insist she come out and ride with him in the front seat because she is his “lover.” Horrified, Connie shouts to him that he is crazy and retreats inside to the kitchen. As she does, Connie finds herself extremely disoriented in fear for her life. Feeling like a victim of some supernatural insight, she barely recognizes her home. 

From the screen door, Arnold tells her that he will not come inside the house unless she touches the phone. He tells her that if she comes out, they will have “a nice ride,” but if she does not, he’ll wait for her family to come home “and then they’re all going to get it” (263). He asks Connie about a woman down the road who owns chickens, but Connie replies that she is dead. At the mention of her death, Arnold becomes defensive. Connie runs into the back room to call for help, but she can hear only a roaring sound as she shouts into the phone. 

The next passage becomes elliptical: A blur of unclear action resolves with Connie on the floor, her back wet. Arnold tells her to put the phone back and she does. He tells her to come out to him, reminding her that her home is a “cardboard box I can knock down anytime” (265). Connie tells herself, “I have got to think. I have got to know what to do” (265). In his sing-song lilt, Arnold tells Connie that her family is eating hot dogs and enjoying an open-air bonfire, and that she is better than them because none of them would make such a noble sacrifice for Connie. In the story’s final image, Connie stands and walks out into the daylight. All around her is a wide expanse of greenery and sunlight that she does not recognize: “so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it” (266).

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Where Are You Going Where Have You Been — Character Analysis In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Character Analysis in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

• Categories: American Literature Short Story Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

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Words: 563 |

Published: May 31, 2021

Words: 563 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited:

• Gibbons, B. (2002). Romeo and Juliet: Analysis, critique, and general resources. Greenwood Press.
• Greenblatt, S. (2010). Romeo and Juliet in performance: Stage production and adaptation. Manchester University Press.
• Holland, P. (2008). Shakespeare survey: Volume 61, Shakespeare, sound, and screen. Cambridge University Press.
• Knights, L. C. (2015). Explorations: Essays in Criticism Mainly on the Literature of the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press.
• Shakespeare, W., & Wells, S. (2011). Romeo and Juliet. Oxford University Press.
• Simpson, C. (2014). Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Routledge.
• Wills, G. (2016). Shakespeare and the Crisis of Meaning: Interpreting the Plays. Yale University Press.
• Zitner, S. (2015). Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": Texts, contexts, and interpretations. Routledge.
• Zurcher, A. (2014). Shakespeare and early modern drama: Text and performance. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare.
• McLeish, K. (2013). "A bud bit by an envious worm": The Love Sonnets of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. OpenEdition Journals.

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The Price of Perky Boobs

“Look at my boobs and tell me what you think.”

I’m a 20-year-old retail assistant, beseeching an older colleague and close friend, to evaluate my bare breasts in the backroom after hours. Unbuckling my bra, I stand before her, totally exposed. “What are you talking about?” She responds. “They’re fine!” After years of self-critiquing, I wasn’t convinced.

While the perceived ‘perfect’ size of breasts have fluctuated with time, breasts have always been beholden to one immovable standard: perky. Those with breasts that align with this archetype may consider their boobs a source of #freethenipple empowerment. Other women feel a kind of wearied distaste for their tatas; forgoing a bra is inconceivable, and god forbid they go on top. Some have embraced a kind of ‘it-is-what-it-is’ booby ambivalence.

I spent several college summers fitting bras at a contemporary lingerie chain—measuring breasts, buckling brassieres and at times, literally lifting flesh into cups—so I have met all these women. I have been them, too. When the pandemic found me in my mid-20s – prompting a massive lifestyle shift and a discovery of disordered eating. I’d moved to the west coast and, without daily walking around New York City, took up running and downloaded Noom, a calorie counter app that promptly capped my daily intake at 1200 calories. (Editor’s note: Research has shown that calorie tracking, including with apps, may contribute to eating disorders.) Within three months, my breasts descended four bra sizes, taking my nipples with them. With that, my boobs entered their new, deflated era, and for the first time, I felt incentivized to confront the issue.

I was not the only one to recently research breast lifts —the number of people searching for them peaked during summer 2021, and has continued to spike each summer since, according to Google Trends. It’s coincided with the arrival of Ozempic , forcing women—and myself—into the same societally-constructed conundrum. Weight loss? We like it. Small, saggy breasts caused by weight loss? Unacceptable. From 2019 to 2023, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says there was a 30 percent increase in requests for breast lifts (mastopexies)—placing the procedure in direct competition with its more popular sister: implants. “I want my titties pinned back to my shoulders, right where they used to be,” Rihanna revealed in last month’s issue of Interview . “I don’t want implants. I just want a lift.”

New York-based board-certified plastic surgeon Norman Rowe has made his name on the Upper East Side and beyond as a breast expert. In the past year, his requests for lifts have almost tripled—an exponential increase that he says is a result of rampant semaglutide use."

“I get a lot of women who've lost a substantial amount of weight, especially with Ozempic ,” he says. “The more weight someone loses—and the quicker they lose it—the more impact that has on the skin. Body procedures are just going through the roof, 30 percent of our business is now dedicated to face, breast and back lifts.”

When I first consulted with Dr. Rowe for a breast lift , he sketched the anchor-like incision required. He would cut around the areola, down the center of the breast, removing excess skin and raising the nipple so it no longer faces down. This would not create cleavage or add fullness. For that, he emphasized, you need an implant.

“A lift will take care of the sag in the skin, it will take care of the position of the nipple, but it will not address the volume loss of the upper poles of cleavage,” he says. (“Upper poles” is how plastic surgeons refer to the breast tissue above the nipple.) Patients often come in without realizing the limitation of a breast lift, says Dr. Rowe. “There is a misconception among patients of what a lift is. So I figured out the way to ask if they wanted an augmentation or a lift was, ‘Do you want cleavage ?’ Either you want to get bigger and your cleavage to change, or you want to be the same size but get rid of the droopiness.”

I fit into the latter group, or so I thought. Anyone who remembers the 90s will also remember that buxom beauties were not only abundant but considered femininity made manifest. Even if you joined in on the bimbo jokes that shamed the cosmetically enhanced likes of Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, their perfectly rounded, perky breasts were still taped to the bedroom walls of your school crush. Anything less than a squeeze-worthy palmful, anything that succumbed to gravity, would be passed over by Playboy editors—relegated instead to the readership of National Geographic.

In the weeks leading up to my surgery, I would debate the pros and cons of implants over and over again. Like Dr. Rowe, I was struggling to understand my expectations. Due to their generally higher placement, my nipples would be raised only an inch. With the removal of skin, my 34D boobs would likely decrease by a half or a whole cup size. Was it worth going through all of this, just for slightly smaller tits with slightly higher nipples? Would I be satisfied with, well, a slight difference?

This was also plaguing Dr. Rowe, who responded to my initial consultation with multiple surgical plans. “One of the key things that I try to ascertain when I'm examining a patient: what are their true expectations and, more importantly, are they realistic for the patient?”

When Dr. Rowe first opened his private practice in 2004, he was routinely implanting 500 and 600cc implants—for reference, one cup size is around 250cc. With larger implants dropping faster, creating sagging, he says women have trended smaller in the last five years. Fat transfer enhancements, popular among those seeking natural-looking breasts, can calcify into hard lumps and be mistaken for cancer during mammography—resulting in additional surgery. The complications and shelf lives associated with implants have also become more well-known : follow-up implant removal or replacement surgeries after 10 years or sooner, and ruptured implants need to be replaced in up to 17.7% percent of patients after 6 or 10 years (the rupture rate after revision augmentation is between 2.9% and 14.7%). Breast implant illness is a controversial topic—it’s a term patients came up with, rather than a medical diagnosis; there’s a lack of data on the topic; and no real agreement about what the symptoms are, though patients tend to name hard-to-track ones, like fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, rash, memory loss—but the FDA and many doctors agree there’s still much to learn, Grant Stevens, the president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) and a clinical professor of plastic surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, previously told to Allure .

Still, the promise of built-in cleavage was tempting. I wanted to go braless without insecurity. Wear plunging dresses without experimenting with endless sticky cutlets. I didn’t want to tug up my breasts in tight tops. At the same time, I didn’t want to go bigger, and I didn’t want to possibly undergo multiple surgeries on my breasts as I aged. My heart just wasn’t in the implants.

“Whereas I used to do a lot of breast implant mastopexies—where you put in the implants at the same time—today, I'm probably doing a larger number of mastopexies [breast lifts] alone,” he says.

Post-consultation, the options Dr. Rowe offered me were a mastopexy with a small implant or a mastopexy with an internal bra. The internal bra is a lesser-known procedure that originated in the ‘80s, reaching wider awareness more recently, Rowe says, with the help of a rebrand and big marketing push . Originally, the internal bra was a kind of cone shape (picture Madonna) created from a Gore-tex mesh. Over time, there were claims the mesh may have been obscuring mammography, and insurance companies began rejecting claims for mammograms if the patient had an internal bra. That’s where Galaflex came in. A new internal bra material first implemented around 2016, it’s best described as an absorbable mesh sewn into the chest wall.

“Think of it as a hammock,” says Dr. Rowe. “It goes underneath the implant [around existing breast tissue] and keeps it from descending over time. You don't need a full cone because you’re not pulling anything up—but you are protecting the implant from moving down after two years. You have your own sling.”

A lot of breast surgeries rely on skin to hold up an implant or (in the case of a lift-only) breast tissue, Dr. Rowe explained to me, but skin is not capable of bearing weight. Someone who has skin that has been stretched from rapid weight loss is a perfect candidate for an internal bra because that stretching of the skin weakens the layer of collagen that’s usually a built-in structure to prevent descent. But after Galaflex dissolves, in about 1-2 years, “it gets replaced by collagen — which would not have been there otherwise,” says Dr. Rowe, an assessment validated by studies published in the journals Aesthetic Surgery ( in 2022 and 2016) and Plastic and Aesthetic Research . “While the internal bra itself is gone, its impact remains.”

This was enough to convince me to get an internal bra, which starts at $10,000 at Dr. Rowe's practice, making the cost of a breast lift with an internal bra $40,000 and up. While I was assured the results of an internal bra are not permanent—Dr. Rowe said I could expect them to last for at least 10 years—it does make it less likely for the breasts to droop over time. And an internal bra is less likely to interfere with breastfeeding—something that may or may not be in my future—than an implant.

My surgery took around an hour and a half. I was in the clinic by 7:30am, put under general anesthesia, and awake around 11:30am. During the procedure, Dr. Rowe removed excess skin and sewed the gauze to my ribcage, reshaping the remaining skin and tissue to lift my breasts and nipples while reducing the size of my areolas. I was back to my hotel room in a surgical bra by noon. Recovery requires you to wear a surgical bra, day and night, for at least a month — eventually downgrading to a sports bra until around six weeks. A surgical bra is a wireless bralette that closes at the front (so you don’t have to stretch your arms back), and feels very lightweight but also extremely tight. The compression helps with the swelling but also keeps the breasts in their proper place as they heal. I was unable to sleep on my side for around 10 days, and there’s no lifting more than 10 pounds, or working out other than walking, for three weeks. Following that, scar tape or gel on the sutured areas (around the areola, down and under the breast) is an everyday essential for a year.

This dress was impossible for me to wear without a bra before, now they sit perfectly without any support.

The first several days require heavy reliance on another person. For the first 48 hours, my boyfriend lifted and lowered me into bed, dressed me, and brushed my hair and teeth because I couldn’t raise my arms. I was encouraged to walk the next day, and allowed to fly or drive if necessary on the second (I’d traveled to New York City for the surgery, and had booked my flight back home two days later). I had full mobility again by day three or four, but the discomfort should also not be underestimated—specifically with the internal bra. I felt a constant pang and tugging pain on my ribcage that affected even the most basic activities (like lifting groceries or shaving my legs) for the first several weeks.

For the first 24 hours, I was in so much pain that I cried all the way through my post-op appointment the next morning. In the first 24 hours, I was taking a low-dose prescription opiate by itself, which wasn’t enough pain medication, so Dr. Rowe recommended I take it in conjunction with Extra Strength Tylenol. (He compared Tylenol to the main meal, while Oxycodone and Tramadol were a kind of ‘chaser’—supplementing the OTC medication should I need something stronger.) Through my tears, I revealed my new, bruised breasts to Dr. Rowe. Upon inspecting his work, the surgeon concluded he was “very happy” with the results.

“You're trying to make their soul better,” he explains of cosmetic surgery. “While I'm not taking out their appendix, when a patient sees themselves as having a flaw–rightfully so or not–you're trying to correct it. And sometimes to them, it's life and death. Honestly, down deep, I'm a fixer. Seeing a problem and getting a solution, a good solution, it's gratifying.”

I didn’t look at my breasts for the first week—a mostly unconscious choice. For as long as I remember, I have avoided looking at my breasts entirely. Even before my weight loss changed their appearance significantly I always felt unsatisfied with them on a bad day, or ambivalent at best. Eight days after surgery, I unzipped my surgical bra and inspected the result for the first time. Dr. Rowe had reduced the size of my areolas, raised the nipples, and rounded my breasts into two symmetrical mounds. The anchor-shaped incision was sutured with almost invisible stitches. I was looking at boobs I had only seen on screen, or on my most genetically-blessed friends.

I turn away from the mirror. The change might seem slight to some, but to me, mastopexy had made a world of difference. “Tell me what you think,” I say to my boyfriend. “They’re perfect,” he responds. This time, I believed the beholder.

To read more about plastic surgery:

• Breast Lifts Are on the Way Up
• 13 People Get Real About Their Facelifts
• I’m 96 and I’ve Had 3 Facelifts — Here’s What I Learned

Now watch Brooke Shields' 10 Minute Beauty Routine:

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“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes Analytical Essay

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Joyce Carol Oates is considered to be one of the most captivating authors. Her novels and short stories introduce numerous themes, which are significant for both men and women of any age. Her “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was written in the 1960s as a kind of response to the events in Arizona, connected to the times, when one man raped and killed several girls. This essay shall analyze the main scenes and the ending of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

This is why realism and real-life cruelty are the things, which are inherent to this story and turn out to be significant points for any time. The main character in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Connie, is a 15-year-old girl, and Arnold Friend, the antagonist, is an adult man. The interactions, which happen between Arnold Friend and Connie and several rather provoking moments connected with Connie’s young age, immaturity, and her family’s lack of understanding, lead the story and Connie’s life to a tragic end.

Lots of students and ordinary readers find “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” as an educative story that “captures so well their sense of rebellion against their patriarchal mothers, in particular, and family and society in general” (Doll, 94). Lots of young girls try to become independent earlier than it is possible. They try to pay the attention of other people to their appearance, their hair cut, and their style, but they do not comprehend that their behavior is not that appropriate.

What happens to Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”?Connie faces specific problems within her own house: her mother cannot comprehend her daughter’s intentions and always compares her with her sister. The mother does not want to search for the necessary way to help her daughter; she just let Connie be more closely to the cultural phenomenon and be under threat to choose the wrong way. “She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make her own was all right” (Oates, 25).

To my mind, this very age requires thorough attention from the parents’ side: a child should feel her relatives’ care and support. If there is no chance to find such kind of care, the child starts paying attention to numerous real-life examples and does not have an opportunity to comprehend what is wrong and what is right. This is what resulted in the conflict in the book. This is why this lack of parents’ comprehension and support is one of the crucial reasons, which cause Connie’s tragic end.

As Connie does not see any support from her family’s side as they “fail to become involved in a meaningful way in her life” (Seibel, 367), she starts searching for something outside. As the analysis essay on “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” shows, Arnold Friend turns out to be one of those people, who were eager to provide this little girl with the necessary support. His criminal past and his cruel intentions are not the main reasons, which may lead to the tragic end. To my mind, they are just the other consequences, which appear as a result of family situations and personal uncertainty.

I do agree with the author’s ideas for the relations between the members of the family. If parents are not able to provide their child with the necessary support, this child may face numerous troubles and unpleasant situations, which lead to the tragic end. The analysis of the main scenes and the ending of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” shows that, with the help of one concrete case, Joyce Oates demonstrates how one or two misunderstandings may influence the future of a person, the prospect of a child.

As is clear from the summary, Arnold’s criminal past and his terrible attitude to other people, young ladies, in particular, is not the reason that leads to Connie’s tragic end. Connie’s family, parents’ inattentiveness, and teenage culture – these are the major factors that result in the tragic end of the major character of the story under consideration.

Works Cited

Doll, Mary, A. Like Letters in Running Water: A Mythopoetics of Curriculum. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.

Oates, Joyce, C. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Rutgers University Press, 1994.

Seibel, Hugo, R., Guyer, Kenneth, E., Conway, Carolyn, M. Barron’s MCAT: Medical College Admission Test. Barron’s Educational Series, 2008.

• “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee
• The American Way of Death: Process Analysis in Writing
• "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Oates
• Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Analysis
• Devil’s Image of Arnold Friend in Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Story
• Pecos Bill: Summary and Analysis of the Story
• Poe's life and how it influenced his work
• Ronald Takaki: A Different Mirror
• “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
• Role of Women in Society: Charlotte P. Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 25). “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes. https://ivypanda.com/essays/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been-causes-of-connies-tragic-end/

"“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes." IvyPanda , 25 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been-causes-of-connies-tragic-end/.

IvyPanda . (2018) '“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes'. 25 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes." June 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been-causes-of-connies-tragic-end/.

1. IvyPanda . "“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes." June 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been-causes-of-connies-tragic-end/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ending and Main Scenes." June 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been-causes-of-connies-tragic-end/.