Essay On Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

Finding Her Identity: An Analysis of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been is about a fifteen year old girl named Connie who is searching for her independence from her mother. The exposition is in the month of July at their home, where Connie is being scolded by her mother about her being obsessed with her looks. Her mother says, “Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you’re so pretty? (171) Her mother wants her to be more like her sister June who is twenty-four years old and helps around the house instead of daydreaming like Connie does. Their father is always at work and does not have much interaction with the family. Connie sometimes “wished her mother was dead” (171). Since June always went out with her friends, their mother let Connie go out too. Connie’s friend’s dad would drop them off at the plaza and pick them up at eleven. Connie had “two sides, one for home and one for anywhere that was not her home: her walk… her mouth… and her laugh” (172). But instead of going to the plaza, they liked to go across the road to a drive-in restaurant for older kids. The rising action occurs when Connie is asked to eat by a boy named Eddie, but as they walk through the parking lot there is a man in a gold convertible that says “Gonna get you,
“Criminal Minds” episodes deal with crime and in this story it is a stalker wanting Connie and knew everything about her. In the episode the Crossing from “Criminal Minds”, there was a stalker involved, but the storyline was different. A line from the episode is, “she panics and calls her fiancé. “He’s back, he’s found me again (“Criminal Minds”). Connie sees the gold convertible in the parking lot then as she looks out the window the gold convertible was in her driveway and “now she recognized the driver” from the parking lot