Childhood Memories In Joyce Oates's Where Is Here

The story “Where is Here” by Joyce Oates is about a married couple who are being visited by a mysterious man, who they have never seen before. The visitor is walking through their house, seemingly reliving childhood memories. When the stranger says, “I mean, I was a child in this house” this proves that the stranger had lived in the house as a child and had memories of his childhood, but there was no telling how long ago that was. The wife is worried about who the young man is and what his intentions are, she even says “The garage! What does he want in there!” thus proving her anxiousness about the stranger. The stranger asks to come into the house, and the wife agrees to let him in saying, “We can’t bar the doors against him. That would be cruel”(Oats #). The stranger enters the house and begins meandering around, having childhood memories about his mother, father, and the events in his childhood. After a night of the man exploring the house, the father forced the stranger out of the house and then locks the door. In this story many questions are asked and several are left unanswered: Who was the stranger, What was is purpose for being there that night, and Why did the stranger act the way he did towards the father. So the story starts out with a stranger coming to a family’s door at night around supper time. Nobody knows who the stranger is nor what he wants, but they allow the

Now the way the story is written, you can’t tell if the stranger has malicious intent or whether he was just simply a man trying to relive childhood memories. All we were able to infer about the stranger is as follows: He lived in the house as a child, He was mysterious, and He wanted to meander around the house to see the house for one final time. Not much else is known from the story unless it is