Where Are You Going Where Have You Been Character Analysis

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. This story ultimately has a tragic ending, and perhaps the author …show more content…
Who seems to be very experience in this sort of things. And this doesn’t appear to be the first time he is doing something like this. After all the author of the story Joyce Carol Oates has admitted that the story was based on a real serial killer. However, what’s fascinating about this story is the fact that Arnold is able to manipulate Connie into doing exactly what he wants her to do, he speaks with a very soft voice the entire time even when he is making threats, which appears to work well for him, and at the end is able to convince Connie to come to the car without even putting up a fight. To Conclude, in Where you going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates we observe that Connie realizes that she has this great power to attract boys, however she doesn’t appear to understand that there is a negative side to this power, this is partly due to the fact that she is only fifteen years old, and more specifically in her case the fact that she was unfortunate enough to meet Arnold Friend who is an experienced serial killer and clearly knows what he is