Joyce Carol Oates
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what is with the ending of "where are you going, where have you been"
>>By Kimmy (Sunday, 26 Jan 2003 10:19)
I am in the middle of a research paper about Joyce Carol Oates and have decided to use "Where are you going, where have you been" as one of my stories. I think that the ending has to do with Connie decideing to go with Arnold to save her families life. He has minipulated her into thinking that if she doesn't go with him her and her whole family will be killed... This story is based on a real life serial killer that would lure young girls into his car by smooth talking them and making the girls think that he was their age. It was the "Pide Piper" murders or something like that.
>>By Bev (Sunday, 26 Jan 2003 10:19)
if anyone has read The Barrens, I have to analyze it...so if you have any ideas about motifs, characterization, please send it now
>>By Jen (Sunday, 26 Jan 2003 10:19)
i am also doing a paper on this story....there are a few facts ill give ya real quick.......look into bob dylan's song "its all over now baby blue".....the numbers on the car (31,19,17) are the old terstamnet counting backwards....33rd chapter is judges, chapter 19 verse 17. It reads: "And the old man lifted up his eyes and saw the wayfarrer in the street of the city; and the old man said to him, where are u going? and whence did u come?"
>>By aaron (Monday, 3 Feb 2003 22:51)
i hope that helps ya bev
>>By aaron (Monday, 3 Feb 2003 22:52)
Where are you going, where are you been? proves in history of myths females play a role of helpless
weakness, powerless to overcome their male attackers. The tale of the Greek Goddess Persephone
showed this trait when she was abducted by Hades into the underworld. The choice it seems they have
in following their attacker is merely illusionary and yet seemingly avoidable. This has to do with the fact
that both women in these tales were young. Both innocent and virgins living carefree at the time
of their attack. Both girls were at point where they were learning about their sexual identities. Arnold, much
older, wiser, and permeditated her abduction as does Hades in seeking Persephone, who is Zeus's
brother, who spied on her too. They tricked their victims into thinking they had a choice. The choice
of going back to earth for Persephone and for Connie having her family hurt. Hades knew that if Persephone
ate the Pomegranate seeds that she would be bound in Hades while Arnold revealed the vast extent of his
knowledge about her family. The choices aren't really choices but ploys to attain something else. Tragedy comes
in the form of having taken the childhood away from both these characters and at the same time their lives. For Persephone
every time she desends to the underworld the earth dies as well as she and when Connie goes with Arnold because she is going
with a serial rapist he is going to eventually kill her. The places these male energies take them are to places without any hope. For instance
Connie is taken to place to be killed while Hades is place where the underworld, place of the dead. Theses choices are not made but instances
of survival. Because a choice in definition implies more than 2 options with all of them carrying equal weight therefore
equal chance of occuring. But if this is not the case then it becomes skewed.
>>By Glen (Saturday, 1 Mar 2003 09:51)
The ending does suck & the story is just damn scary! Arnold is so creepy!
>>By Jules (Saturday, 1 Mar 2003 23:47)
There are lots of other literary and philosophical sources that can be drawn upon for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" I like the parallel that Glen has drawn upon with the tale of the Cere's daughter Persephone. Oates does get a lot of her ideas from newspaper stories, as Bev alludes to. However, the Biblical symbolism in this allegory cannot be ignored. You have this virginal, naive female archetype (Connie), a stranger that, probably more than resembling Satan, resembles Death, the muted friend resembling the charioteer, and the car the vehicle of Death. Even notice that the car is golden like the apple eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that it is parked under a tree, and that the house is green like a garden! Arnold Friend: like many of the conundrums in this story, is a paradox, a foil, antithesis. Arnold Friend: an earnest friend. He is neither. In fact, I dare say that he is more of an idea than an actual person. He seems to hail from a supernatural place of knowing, knowing about Connie's personal life, her family, all of her comings and goings. This brings me to the title: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?": The passage from Judges is a very good find. We have discussed this in my Humanities class, but also look up a particular painting by Gaugin. It is a mural with a similar title that escapes me now. The ending of the story is one of those things that can and cannot be summed up. It is not your typical, current brand of story packaging. Connie is lead from a place of knowing, adolescence, immaturity to a place of knowing, adulthood, and maturity. Even Oates herself says that there is nowhere in the story detailing Connie's death. Although, the reader knows that death is the only transformation for such an awakening. Look to Flannery O' Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" for the parallel. What this says is that at the point when we are affirmed of life we are simultaneously departing it. Connie is about to become a woman, know the meaning of existence and leave existence, all in one stroke. The story can be taken as an extended metaphor for death or maturation or both.
>>By Kerry (Thursday, 19 Jun 2003 10:21)
What promise does Arnold make to Connie
>>By Ann (Saturday, 28 Jun 2003 14:26)
You'd wonder why people like stories that leave the reader hanging....
Writers who leave their stories open run the high risk of leaving their story very dry. Personally, I think stories that don't have a clean-cut ending just plain suck. It feels as if the writer did not want to spend the time to find a suitable ending. - but that's just me...
Anybody else feel this way?
>>By Ernie (Saturday, 28 Jun 2003 19:01)
There is a lot more to this story if you read it very carefully. For instance, Arnold Friend is An old Fiend if you drop the "R's" from his first and last name. Probably the oldest fiend is Satan who walked with hooves as did Arnold. He leaned on the post and adjusted his boot as if angled from his body at the ankle. The code of 33, 19,17 also ads up to 69. Now who doesnt know what 69 represents? Those are just several obvios findings. Read the story again and look deeply and you will see so much more.
>>By Val (Saturday, 12 Jul 2003 05:49)
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