Where Are You Going Where Have You Been Literary Analysis

In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the author uses clothes as a symbol to reveal our protagonist and antagonist individualities. Connie who is our protagonist is a fifteen-year-old girl who has the habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors. Connie wears a pullover jersey blouse that looked one way when she is home and another way when she is away, in where she wears shorts. In the text, it states that “They must have been familiar sights walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their wrist” (Oates 836). In other words, Connie uses clothes to look attractive, and mature by older men by wearing short clothes, most importantly she believes she is pretty, which also plays a role in her actions and the kinds of clothes she wears. Whereas, the
The Protagonist Connie meet a conflict between the antagonist, Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend decides to show up at Connie’s house with Eddie his wing man uninvited when her parents left the house for a barbecue at an aunt’s house. Connie is forced to fuse two-sided violently. Connie is not fully sexual until Arnold Friend’s intrusion into her home- until then, her sexuality was outside of her “exact” self, the self that she allows her family to see. Her indecent clothes are what attracts older men, but when an older guy like Arnold Friend gives her the attention that she wants, she is frightened and is overpowered by Arnold Friend. She breaks down and is conquered by Arnold Friend. In that moments, she proves to herself that she is still a child by screaming for her mother. As a young child, we should not force our self to want to grow up fast by wearing indecent clothes, there are ways to look attractive and mature without looking sexual and giving wrong