Analysis of Story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”
While reading this short-story one my find themselves relating to Connie, despite her being an oblivious teenager and having narcissistic tendencies. Oates has a habit of mingling literal, figurative, and metaphorical techniques throughout Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
The use of these methods is predominantly obvious in her representation of both Connie’s and Arnold’s bipolar personalities. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home.” Connie guardedly tugs her sweater down when she exits home. Arnold stuffs his boots to appear taller and more good-looking or possibly to cover up the hooved feet of his wicked self. During Connie’s decisions in the story, the reader distinguishes the juvenile beginning from when she breaks away from her family and tries to explore her sexuality. In Arnold’s decisions, the reader sees the typical evil role as an errant cheat and a perverted charmer. On a more mental level, Arnold Friend is the opposite version of Connie’s wishes and daydreams; sensual love is not “sweet and gentle” as portrayed in Bobby King’s songs. Allegorically viewed, Arnold conveys the vehicle that will bring Connie to the “vast sunlit reaches” of her dreams, a metaphor that displays the ambiguity of her wishes.
The story is full of thematic implications and symbolism, making it a swift and effortless read due to Oates’s talent in creating suspense. Each page of Arnold Friend’s revealing and Connie’s consequential terror and rising hysteria is carefully defined. When Arnold makes his first appearance, Connie cannot seem to figure out “if she liked him or if he was just a jerk.” The reader develops a suspicion when she notices his burly neck and arms, his “nose long and hawk-like, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.” Steadily, Connie comprehends that all the traits she “recognizes” in him—attire, body language, the “singsong way he talked” do not fit together the way they should. Her heartbeat increases when she asks his age and observes that his partner has the face of a thirty-year-old baby. Even worse, Arnold possess supernatural vision to the extent of perfectly describing all the visitors at the family barbecue, what they are doing, how they are dressed. There is high speculation that Oates based Arnold on a biblical demon or maybe even the devil himself. (Theriot) Furthermore, Oates has directly stated that she based Arnold on The Pied Piper of Tucson. “He was a disgusting man who mimicked teenagers in talk, dress, and behavior, but he was a middle-aged man.” (Oates) When he goes on to state more openly what he desires from her, Connie’s horror and the story’s suspense mount. Arnold swears not to go in the house unless Connie reaches for the phone; the reader may make a connection here that the devil, as an evil spirit, cannot cross a threshold uninvited. By now, the end seems unavoidable; in her alleged murderer’s words, “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out.”
There is no need to guess why Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is the utmost recurrently anthologized and critically acclaimed of Oates’s short stories. Its fame is safeguarded by the popular Oates combination of sex, aggression, and tension. Its spot in American literature is due to its theme: Oates’s startling view of the modern American failure to distinguish evil in its most predictable forms. A few literary critics have protested the over use of violence in Oates’s work and appear to doubt her astonishing work load; she published over thirty-five volumes of short-stories, novels, and literary criticism in the first twenty years as a professional writer.
This story establishes Oates skill to accomplish suspense and organized literary control. The mixing of the three writing techniques: metaphorical, literal and figurative makes a complex masterpiece. From the sentence that started it, “Her name was Connie,” to the one that ended it, “My sweet little blue-eyed girl,” this short-story is one where each word matters.
