“Where Is Here?” is a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, which is about a stranger who visits the house of a family, and causes strange things to happen. The diction in this story is also a good example of how to use dialogue and word choice to create a mysterious atmosphere. The stranger says many weird things that make the reader wonder throughout the story, and a good example of this is when the mother asks if his mom is still alive, to which he accidentally responds with, “We’ve all been dead-they’ve all been dead-a long time.” The stranger’s slip of the tongue provides a little insight into what he really is and makes the reader start questioning things. How he also uses the word “dead”, instead of something such as “deceased” or “gone”,
