Change And Transformation In 'Where Is Here' By Joyce Carol Oates

“Change starts in your thoughts”- Unknown. Change or transformation can be imagined or can be real but it still can possibly be scary to someone. Regardless what people are scared of they will still enjoy a good scare in the end. The author scares the readers through transformation in stories by the uses of elements called supernatural, death, and the unknown.

Usually supernatural things have a big part in transformation. Like in the house taken over, when the ghosts took over the house. When the ghosts took over the main character said “ They’ve taken over the our section” (Cortazar pg.40). The way in the book it shows transformation is that when the house slowly is being taken over then is fully taken over by the ghosts. Also possession

For example when someone is young they are most likely scared of the dark cause of the unknown things that are there but in reality it’s nothing. In the book for “Where is Here” there was a stranger that came over to a family's house and the family was fearing him a little bit. Then finally once he said “We’ve all been dead - they’ve all been - a long time”(Oates pg.73). So with that quote it still leads to transformation in fear because they weren't really scared until he said that. Another form of fear can be in your dreams. Sometimes people are afraid of their dreams. They are afraid of their dreams because at times they can be nightmares and you have no idea why you had them so it makes you have a deep scared feeling about it. “We do not fear the unknown. We fear what we think we know about the unknown”(Teal Swan). Also darkness can have a fear of the unknown to it too. The reasons for that is because your imagination can go as far as it wants to go and especially like when you're scared of the dark your mind makes you feel like you see something or feel like something will happen. Darkness relates to transformation by how you go from just standing there in the dark imagining of what you're seeing and you don't know if it’s real or not. In other words the fear of the unknown is a big reason why people are afraid of

It's scary because no one knows what really happens after you die. For example in the book “Fall of the House of Usher” ushers feelings about his sister's death had him sad and depressed and his thoughts were he thinks his sister is dead. “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus , thus and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their result..”(Poe pg.40). The way this quote leads to transformation is how he used to probably be happy but since his sister died he slowly just became really sad and depressed. Death can come in many forms. One form of it can be like zombies. The fear of zombies are that they come back to life after death and they eat people. Also ghosts are a fear of the unknown because it’s either that they don't know what it is or they think they’re imaging it. From the book “Fall of the House of Usher” usher was scared of the ghost of lady Madiline because he didn't know if it was real or not. As a result the transformation of alive to dead relates to ghosts by first a person was living then