Are You Going Where Have You Been Literary Analysis

Fantasies are like landscapes with no real ending and a place where desires can run freely but at the cost of one´s own mind. The Fantasies inside ¨Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been¨ show Connie´s freedom to an extent, in which her own knowledge and persona become her crutch in the aftermath of her conflict. But, however, In ¨Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” Joyce Oates uses Connie struggle against Arnold to portray her fear of adulthood as well as symbolize her innocence being tarnished, which resulted her in maturing.
Foremost, the conflict begins with Connie trying to become, visually, a woman so that she can attract the attention of young men at the hangouts. The author describes Connie´s attempts of being appealing by stating,¨She …show more content…
In ¨A Source For¨Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been¨ Tom Quirks explains that, ¨Oates [had] also seem to have combined Schmid´s three victims into one, or perhaps two characters. The murder of Wendy Fritz had been the result of her having accompanied her older sister Gretchen to the desert with Schmid¨ (Quirks 417). In other words, in ¨Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been¨ the author uses the crime in the story by giving June freedom to go hang out with her friend and that same privilege was also passed down to Connie. Therefore, she was given the freedom to go hang out with her friends at joints and drive throughs and would eventually meet up with Arnold Friend in the …show more content…
Connie first reaction towards Arnold´s introduction was when she stated, ¨I don't even know who you are¨ (Oates 197). Her reaction towards Arnold invitation and appearance shows a flicker of her fear. In ¨A Source For¨Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been¨ Tom Quirk describes Arnold Friend as being based off of Howard Schmid, whom, ¨went to bizarre and rather stagey extremes. As all the national magazine pointed out, Schmid stuffed rags and folded tin cans into his black leather boots to appear a few inches taller. And he dyed his hair raven black, often wore pancake makeup¨ (Quirk 414). The theme reality vs. fantasy appears again when Schmid, who Arnold Friend is based off, uses disguises to attract teen girls and at the same time is using their fantasized desires to capture them. The author uses this in ¨Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going¨ to illustrate that Arnold Friend is no real which was described by the author when Connie thought that, ¨His whole face was a mask, . . . tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat¨ (Oates