First, choose either T. C. Boyle's "The Love of My Life" or Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Second, choose a brief passage (a few sentences, a short paragraph) that exemplifies either the main symbol or the story's point of view. As you closely read the passage, i.e., attending to the subtle language cues like we've been practicing in class, discuss what the symbol or point of view conveys about the overall meaning of the story. What idea or theme does the symbol point to? Why is the story told from this particular point of view, and what does the attitude toward the main character(s) imply about the main idea? Due Thursday, August…
“Where are you going, Where have you been” is a famous story that was written by Joyce Carol Oates. In this story, Connie is fifteen years old girl and the main character. She seems to have always lived in her sister’s shadow, June, who was apparently better all-around. Connie seems to be the more attractive of the two due to which she felt that her attractive personality would succumb to pleasure in the arms of a random boy. One day, she decided to stay home as opposed to going to a barbecue with her family. At that time, Arnold Friend, the antagonist in Oates’ story drives up to Connie’s house. Connie is a character that represents the nature of epiphany in literature. Through Connie, we learn how a character can have a highly significant impact on an important work of literature and the person reading the story. Connie’s naïve understanding of the world and her immaturity led to her downfall in “Where are you Going, Where Have You Been?”…
In Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Arnold Friend, a conniving antagonist, charms a naive teenager named Connie into believing he will rescue her from her inattentive family. However, at the story’s climax, Connie fears for her life yet cannot resist Arnold’s temptations. Although details of Friend’s appearance, speech, and actions should warn Connie of his evil intentions, through Oates’s portrayal of Friend as a devil-figure, Connie is easily “conned” foreshadowing her deadly fall. Many times throughout the story, Arnold reveals supernatural qualities that he possesses, foreshadowing the spell that Connie is put under and cannot break.…
A close reading of Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" reveals many layers of possible meaning, which makes it a fine example of literary merit.…
Modern society has many standards that people follow and accept: shake hands when meeting someone, do not pick nose in public, and bathe on a regular basis. Norms are just a few of the many different social needs in the world today. Abnormalities throw people through a loophole, cause confusion amongst each other, and contrast uniformity. Psychopaths lead to the death of individuals that conform to the standard and have no remorse for the action. They disrupt the flow of progress and end the life of another with no penalty of law. Psychopaths work to change how society thinks as a norm, such as a psychopath in “Cask of Amontillado,” “The Lottery,” and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.”…
In the story, A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor is about a family whom wanted to go to a family vaction along with the grandmother. However, along the way, the family bumped into the "Misfit" and his friends. The "Misfit" is a crimina whom escape from prison along with two criminal escapees. One by one, every family member were sent to the woods to meet their deaths leaving the grandmother talking to the "Misfit" and pleading him to spare her life other than beg for her family's lives. In the end, it turned the family vacation to a murder. O'Connor used the literacy devices such as foreshadowing which gives a hint or a suggestion on a event that will most likely happen and irony which is between what actually happened and what is expected to happened. The author is trying to show her readers that everyone has their own values and opinions than others. She's having the readers understand what her views and…
Irony and surprise are common literary devices authors use to communicate their ideas when writing literary works. Irony allows the writer to suggest an interpretation that is different from the literal meaning of the words used in the text. The element of surprise allows the writer to manipulate the reader’s expectations and take them somewhere completely different. In the short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flanney O’Connor and Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood, both authors use the element of irony and surprise to engage readers and to develop deeper levels of meaning in their text.…
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” conveys the theme of good vs. evil through Connie and Arnold by creating a sympathetic character and using symbolism, creating a fine line between the protagonist and the antagonist. In this short story, the antagonist Arnold Friend is a seducting creep that seduces young, innocent girls to “go on a date with him”. While he is at the protagonist, Connie’s, house, he is persuading Connie by telling her all about herself, including his “Sign. And he drew an X in the air, leaning toward [Connie]” (Oates 325). The “X” is implied as a symbol of evil and death. “X” is used as the antagonist’s sign to mark himself as evil and deadly. This conveys the theme of good vs. evil because…
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates is a short story that brings many girl’s nightmares to life. The story is one about a young, naïve girl named Connie, and her deranged abductor, Arnold Friend. Oates uses the setting in Connie’s life to create a very realistic situation. Oates also uses descriptive language to create vivid images of the setting, charters, and the emotions Connie feels. By analyzing Connie’s home setting and the descriptive language Oates uses, we will be able to further understand how Connie’s thoughts and actions were effected by her setting.…
(Oates p. 339) Why don’tcha come on out and just go for a ride?” At this Connie protested again and claimed she had “things to do” which made Arnold change his jovial tone to a more flat, onerous one.…
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie, like most teens, needs support as she starts on an internal, precarious journey towards maturity. Traditionally, culture plays a major role in offering guidelines for an adolescent’s journey of solitude and personal identity. An example of these guidelines are fairytales and folklores. Fairytales are read or told to children to provide a moral understanding of good and evil by using symbolic images and happy endings. Oates frequently portrays characters and situations that resemble the themes of different fairytales throughout her short story. She merges into her story the themes of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. Connie is at the…
In Chapter 26 of Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he explains that any great literary work is dripping with irony. At first glance, a reader may not see the it, but a closer look at a book like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening will make a reader snicker at all the irony that comes to light. In The Awakening, the relationship between protagonist, Edna, and her husband is ironic. As Edna is approaching, sunburned, he looks at his wife “as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin, 7). Mr. Pontellier feels as though he owns his wife, but throughout the book she ignores his opinions, has affairs, and eventually leaves him. The relationship with her husband is not the only ironic one Edna has; she has a love hate relationship with her children. Trying to appease her “mother woman” friend, Adele, Edna says, “I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (Chopin, 80). However, Edna’s death was very selfish because instead of saving her children, she took away their mother. Edna’s death was Chopin’s great irony in The Awakening. At the end of the book, Edna wades, into the sea, purposefully, until “it [is] too late; the shore [is] far behind her, and her strength [is] gone” (Chopin, 190). Edna’s great awakening, her realization of freedom and self, leads to her suicide. Once a reader is trained to look for irony, she will never stop seeing it, adding depth and humor to the reading…
Everyone experiences transitions in their lives. Sometimes these changes are insignificant, like a change in schools. Sometimes these can be major life changing events, like the passage from childhood to adulthood. In Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, the author uses a borderline crime story to investigate a loss of innocence and the unknown future.…
In modern day America, our culture has begun to revolve around traveling and moving from place to place. Never staying in one place long enough to get to know the land. It is because of this new trend that Wallace Stegner wrote his essay "The Sense of Place." In this essay, Stegner informs us that the only way for us to feel a sense of place is for us to submit ourselves to the land; he does this using many techniques such as: figurative language, use of a personal anecdote, and the use of second person.…
The short story “Where are you going, Where have you been?,” by Joyce Carol Oates, is a tale about a teenage girl making the journey from her known world into something she has never experienced before. The main character lives the normal teenage life listening to the latest music and going out with her friends to the mall. “They must have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk” (753). One night with her friends changes her life forever. Someone that notices her at the restaurant would eventually become the person that makes her leave everything she knows and enter a world she has never seen before as “she watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway” (764).…