A common theme throughout Joyce Carol Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been is that things are not always as they appear to be on the surface. Joyce M. Wegs discusses this phenomenon, explaining how, within Oates’s use of a stereotypical, suburban town, “a familiar world suddenly appears alien” (Wegs 99). Connie comes from what would appear to be a nice, typical family. She lives in a town that, on the surface, is one just like any other in suburban America. However, the readers quickly learn that Connie’s life instead represents all that is gawky, shallow, and, arguably sinful, in our world. This grotesque depiction of the stereotypical, middle class, American lifestyle during this time gives Oates’s story its rightful classification as a horror-mystery.
Connie’s character is a prime example of having multiple personas, as, “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 1). Connie’s main focus throughout the story is her appearance, making her a symbol for the all too common shallow teenager in our society. In fact, “much of the terror of the story comes from the recognition that there must be thousands of Connies” (Wegs 100). However, Connie, like much of the youth in America, comes from a family that does not necessarily approve of her rebellious and shallow lifestyle, so she puts on a separate persona in order to disguise her “true self” from her family. Oates plays this separate persona so strongly that, in fact, the reader begins to forget that Connie is merely fifteen, until her innocence is made apparent again in her most desperate time, as she’s meeting Arnold Friend.
Arnold Friend is the most obvious example of having deceiving personas in this story. He appears to be a familiar face, so much that Connie “recognized all things about him” (Oates 5). However, the more the readers and Connie are both exposed to Friend, it is made clear that he is not familiar, but instead deceiving Connie in order to appeal to his grotesque needs. Oates seems to purposely make him a confusing and strangely intriguing character, as “she makes no… effort to explain the existence of Arnold” (Wegs 104). This character choice ensures that the readers are left as confused and helpless as Connie, waiting to see what Arnold Friend might say or do next. Because of this, the readers are equally surprised, and slightly horrified, when Connie realizes that Arnold “wasn’t a kid, he was much older” (Oates 5). Something about Friend no longer being someone familiar and relatable to Connie makes his character much more threatening. In that sense, his name itself is deceiving, as the readers begin to realize Arnold is anything but a friend to Connie.
It’s arguable that Connie’s parents too put on separate personas, and are therefore equally to blame for the horrendous ending of Oates’s story. Oates makes it clear that, “Connie’s parents, who seem quite typical, have disqualified themselves as moral guides for her” when she expresses how little they are actually involved in Connie’s life (Wegs 100). However, it seems that Oates is trying to additionally add that the typical parents in this typical suburban lifestyle tend to have little true involvement in their children’s lives altogether. In fact, Connie’s friend June’s dad tended to drive the girls around and, “when he came to pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done” (Oates 1). I believe that this reoccurring expression of minor neglect from the children’s parents is just another criticism of the everyday lives we have all grown so accustomed to that we never think to question what we are doing wrong, until it is thrown in our faces in an act as strong the abduction of a fifteen year old girl.
I believe that this lack of personal analysis as a society was one of the driving forces that pushed Oates to write this short story. Although it may appear as a mystery or horror piece, Oates makes multiple underlying critiques towards the lives that most of her readers probably know all too well. Oates makes the life of Connie and her friends and family very familiar, using pop culture references and explaining each aspect of Connie’s family and the town she lives in in order to make the readers feel a sense of comfort and relatability to the story. Oates then uses this comfort and completely turns the direction of the plot around, showing her readers what this type of shallow, ignorant, neglectful lifestyle can lead to, in a fairly grotesque way, leaving the readers questioning their own actions or, where they’re going in life, and where they have been.
Works Cited
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Print.Wegs, Joyce M. “’Don’t You Know Who I Am?’: The Grotesque in Oate’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” Journal of Narrative Technique 5, 1995. Print.
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