Introduction
“Where Are You Going? Where have you been?” is a modern classic by Joyce Carol Oates. The story is about a young girl on the verge of growing up. Like any teenager, she sneaks off, going to a car restaurant to meet boys, not a movie like she told her family. She is naughty and careless and has a bad relationship with her mother. The main character, Connie, represents women and their societal position, while the antagonist. The story illustrates the exploitation of women by men and how women allow themselves to be controlled.
Connie’s life is a life of romantic dreams and expectations. Inwardly, she is ready to break away from the past and come to an imagined beautiful future. However, what happens to the heroine, not in her imagination but in reality, frightens her and shatters the entire ideal story of a relationship with another person built in her mind. The story’s main character has “the habit of looking around in every mirror and checking the faces of everyone she meets and crosses to see if she looks the way she should (Oates 126). This beginning of the story immediately evokes a sense of intense concern for the fate of this girl who is beginning to form into a woman.
Violence in “Where Are You Going? Where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
The heroine’s life is defined by her communication with the male sex; romance becomes the main part of her life, for which any means can be used (e.g., meeting boys through girlfriends). The reflected sexualized culture presents us with a person who prioritizes her beauty. Her connection to the world and its culture is through melodies, which the heroine refers to as secular religion. Regular experimentation and play as an adult show that Connie remains a child inside, who turns to her parent in case of danger. The reader can notice how fragile the heroine’s personality is and how ambivalent her nature is when Arnold Friend launches threats.
Connie changes by the end of the piece when the inner self, fearing violence, takes over the beautiful picture on the outside. It is not easy to sympathize with the heroine because her behavior is dictated by adolescence, but everyone is free to choose their path to becoming an individual without fear of denial. Connie consciously selects the model of behavior that seems optimal for her existence in society, oblivious to the possible consequences. The heroine’s inner conflict is created by the fact that when she gets what she wants, namely, the attention of adult men, which leads her to confusion. In a moment of crisis, Connie becomes herself and realizes how weak and small she is to the outside world, which is full of illusions.
When analyzing the other characters in the piece, it was noticeable that, for the most part, the heroine is not taken seriously as a girl to be taken advantage of, particularly Ellie and Arnold (Oates 137). Her family does not approve of her lifestyle, and her older sister is angry about Connie’s rebuke of her appearance. The only approval she gets is from her friend, which is typical for teenagers. Although her facial features look fake, the heroine has a beautiful appearance that is all fake and unnatural. The violence to which Connie is subjected represents the tendency of some women to allow men to control their lives voluntarily. The heroine gives up her independence to go with a man. This story is about how women continue to let men define themselves in their lives and about their eagerness to be submissive, sexually and generally, and to submit to men.
Conclusion
Thus, in the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the concept of “violence,” acting as a plot device, is multidimensional: the story of a girl’s seduction is presented by D.K. Oates is a story of psychological and alleged physical violence. Despite the dramatic ending of the work, the idea behind it is constructive: it is impossible to realize oneself, to fulfill one’s desires through the acceptance of another’s experience, through dependence on another’s orientation.
Work Cited
Oates, Joyce Carlos. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays, Shorter 13th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2019, pp. 125-138.