Where Are You Going Where Have You Been
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In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oats uses characterization including methods such as symbolism and allusions to develop her characters, and thus establish her theme of the cross roads Connie faces in her transition from the innocence of her adolescence to the impurity of adulthood facilitated by the antagonist, Arnold Friend.
From the beginning of the story, the reader sees Connie has a strong desire to make her early transition into adulthood. Although she in only 15, she acts like an adult as “everything about her had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oats, pg 510). She frequently tests her limits by making her parents believe she was with her friend shopping or seeing a movie, however “sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out” (Oats, pg 510). There she met boys and eventually went out to their cars with them to engage in sexual activities. This shows how Connie, though only 15, wanted to experience adulthood behaviors. Oates also symbolically portrays the anxiety Connie feels in choosing between adolescence and adulthood by depicting her standing at the doorway when Arnold Friend arrives at her house. Connie, is nervous and reluctant to leave her home and her innocence, however she is curious and eager as she stands at the “doorway” to adulthood and the loss of innocence. Schulz and Rockwood say “Connie is ambivalent: she is both fascinated and frightened.. She is uncertain how to bridge the chasm between “home” and “anywhere that was not home,” she stands — or wavers — at the boundary between childhood and adulthood, hesitant and yet anxious to enter the new world of experience which is opening before her (Schulz and Rockwood pg 52).”
Connie’s false sense of adulthood is also made evident by her desire to always be in control and her disregard for the consequences of her premature actions. As stated above, Connie frequently lies to her parents about where she is and she sneaks to places where older, more mature kids hang out. She is also overly confident, initially addressing Arnold Friend with a “Who the hell do you think you are,” and “like hell you are” thinking she can control him with her seasoned flirtatious capabilities and physical attributes as she does other boys (Oates pg 512). However, it soon becomes evident that Connie is a pawn to Arnold Friend, juxtaposed to the situations she usually finds herself in, thus her own over confidence can be said to lead to her demise and the cross roads she will face between adolescence and adulthood.
Oates develops Arnold Friend with an allusion to the devil to help establish the theme of the transition from adolescence to impurity and sin of adulthood. Like the devil, Arnold’s primary means of luring Connie to pass the “doorway” into impurity is temptation. He tempts Connie into danger by recognizing her desire to be loved and her lack of identity. By calling her “sweetheart,” “honey,” and saying “I’m your lover,” Arnold offers her love, something she had never received from any other boy or her family whom she shares no real relationship with. Arnold Friend says, “Ill show you what love is like, what it does” and, “In effect, Friend is offering to take her to a “promised land,” which will supposedly fulfill her previous romantic fantasies about love,” the fantasies depicted in the songs she listened to and movies she watched (Piwinski, D.J., Paragraph 2).
Furthermore, it is also because of Connie’s