Where Are You Going Analysis

In the short story Where are you going, where have you been?, the author Joyce Carol Oates describes the life of a girl named Connie. The lack of love and security at home gives Connie the want to find a source to fill those missing feelings. She enjoys being around music, her friends, and other older boys. These interests are projected into her dream world. Oates shows these moments as the story progresses while Connie’s emotions and the physical state of reality become uncommon to her, even in her own home. Connie faces neglect from her mother, because she used to be beautiful. Now her mother becomes a washed up angry lady that likes to to torment Connie for things she cannot control. Once her mother allows her to leave without a dispute,
When Connie met the two men outside, the music that was playing in the cars was the same music that she listening to. As the strange man talks to Connie, she reasons that he has a lifting voice, “exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song.” Arnold Friend, a strange character, talks and tries to reason with Connie. He almost completely matches Connie’s liking. Most things about him resemble a song. Her mental thoughts gives this guy that she met at a restaurant a name, Arnold Friend. It gave him that name in hope to find a nice friendly guy that will be kind to her. The dream takes a turn for the worst when Arnold Friend starts to push onto Connie. As Connie walks up the stairs, he follows and “one of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it. It pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle.” At this point, the story starts to shift from just a dream to a nightmare. As Arnold Friend threatens her, she runs to the phone. She begins to scream at the phone, into the roaring of the phone. She starts to unrecognize her own home as if it was not hers. The fields, and landscape outside was something “...Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to