This sets up the tragedy that befalls Connie. One could ask, “Why Connie, she's only fifteen and so innocent?”, but is she really? One could argue that she welcomed this tragedy through her behavior and vanity. This is open to interpretation but I believe that her family is to blame.…
A hero is someone who will risk their life to save the people. Connie is a heroin because she risked her life to save her family. Connie was in her house when a car pulled up to her front porch and 2 guys got out of the car. Connie was frighten and stated calmly “ You two better leave” (Oates 7) to make Arnold calm too. Connie gets a creepy feeling that she is going to get hurt if she goes with Arnold Friend in his car.…
In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Connie’s character can be easily categorized as shallow and egotistical. At only fifteen years old, the young teen only worries about her physical appearance and what others think of her. Connie lives in a make-believe world where movies and music affect her views on love. The reader can make the conclusion that Connie is self-centered by reading the line, “She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was alright”…
First Connie's shift in personality is viewed in different perspectives between Connie at home and with her friends. According to the narrator “ Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home”(Oates 2). This points out the concept of duality emphasising that Connie walked and talked differently “childlike and bobbing, pale and smirking” as opposed to her house she would display sharp and timid behavior. The reason for Connie's shift in personality is the lack of male affection she never received from her absent father “their father was at work most of the time” leading her to seek love elsewhere. Although Connie's happiness was found by her friend visiting the drive in restaurant Connies state of mind was based on fantasy.…
Connie is young and pretty, and she is well aware of this. She is always “craning her neck to glance into mirrors” to check on her looks (1). Her relationship with her mother is a…
“Connie’s parents do not understand the significance of her adolescent daydreams and activities. Her mother constantly nags at her for spending too much time in front of a mirror and for not being as steady and reliable as her twenty-four-year-old, unmarried sister.” (Barstow). The author is showing frustration between Connie’s mother and Connie. Connie knows she is pretty and walks around always staring at herself in the mirrors around the house and it makes her mother angry.…
When Connie is not at home or with her friends, she is known to pick up boys at ta restaurant called Big Boy. One evening, when leaving the restaurant with another boy, she catches the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible covered with mysterious writing. One day while her parents were out at a barbeque at her aunt’s house, two men pulled up the drive way in front of Connie’s house and called her come out. She recognizes the driver, who was Arnold Friend from the drive in restaurant. He tells her…
Connie, the beautiful fifteen-year-old self-absorbed adolescent, attempts to test her beauty by allowing boys to lust after her. Little does she know, by seeking validation for her looks, she is setting herself up for failure. It is learned awfully early in this story that Connie is extraordinarily fond of herself. In only the first passage…
Jeannette Walls, a once low class, immature child blossomed into an amazing woman and journalist. While her parents fail to provide some of the simplest needs for her and her siblings, instead of letting it get to her and giving up, she makes the choice to face her problems and even learned to grow from them. Although her family held her back from many opportunities, Jeannette still kept trying her best to become a better person as she grew up. While trying to find herself in an unorthodox, dysfunctional, and crowded family, Jeannette learns self sufficiency and her true identity, which demonstrates how hardships in life create motivation. Being let down is always hard, especially when let down by family, and while not being able to further…
Connie’s transformation is her deciding that she does not want to be a child, in a family who do not understand her, anymore. Instead she chooses to go with Arnold Friend so she can do what adults do without the judgements and rules that her family puts in place. It is necessary to evaluate all the aspects of the story, such as what is happening to Connie internally and what is happening in the world around her, to fully grasp what the moment of transition is for this character, what its significance is and what brought her to that moment. When the main…
Connie appears to be a self-confident girl to the outside world, but after she meets Arnold Friend, she realizes how vulnerable and innocent she is. Indeed, her beauty couldn’t protect her from harm and gives her what she…
The short story ‘Where Are You Going Where Have You Been’ and the movie ‘Smooth Talk’ both tell the same story of a young girl named Connie. Although there are subtle similarities and differences between the two stories, some of the major differences between the two stories revolve around the relationship that Connie has with her family members and how Connie’s character is portrayed throughout the stories and her interactions with Arnold Friend. In the Story ‘Where Are You Going Where Have You Been’ Connie is portrayed as a typical young rebellious teenage girl who likes to hang out with her friends at the shopping plaza in her free time. In the book Connie’s relationship with her mother is not very good because her mother always speaks of…
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is an eerie short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story, published in the fall 1966 edition of Epoch Magazine generated a big buzz (Ptalzgraf 221). Oates dedicated the story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after listening to his song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”(“Where”Shmoop). She was also inspired by the gruesome serial killer Charles Schmid. Joyce Carol Oates most famous short story is “Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been.”…
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been “With great power comes great responsibility”, this very old saying famously appears in the Marvel comic series Spider Man. Uncle Ben uses these wise words to warn Peter Parker that with any sort of power, there is also a negative side that comes with it. We can observe this in, Where you going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates. In this story the main character Connie realizes that she has this great power to attract boys, she is very much obsessed with this new power and sees the positive side of her new power, however she doesn’t quite realize the negative side of her power. This is due partly to her age, and to a great degree of being unfortunate to encounter a serial killer like Arnold Friend.…
Forced Silence Imagine walking down the hallway at school, alone. Then you pass him. The person who treated you so poorly, so terribly. The person who committed an act of selfishness, of terror. The person who treated you like you weren’t human, as if you had no feelings or thoughts.…