Joyce Carol Oates 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been'

Joyce Carol Oates captured more than just the reader when she wrote the story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.” Oates recreates an event that took place in the mid-1960s, where a grown man, who had shaggy black hair and a boyish charm, would lure teenage girls into his car, rape and murder them, and then bury their bodies in the desert. The fate of the main character in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” lies between Oates’s wavering suspense. From the beginning Oates shows the reader that the story is a flashback. “Her name was Connie.” “She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck…” As the story continues we get a hint of Connie’s personality. She is in constant conflict with her family,