Joyce Carol Oates Research Paper

Murders are often great topics when choosing to write book novels. Joyce Carol Oates went above and beyond when she wrote the short story “were are you going, where have you been.” Bob Dylan is an American singer, songwriter, artist, and writer, who Joyce Carol Oates was most dedicated to. In the song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” the song’s lyric “Oh, where have you been, my blue eyed son?” provided her with her title of “were are you going, where have you been.” Which is based on the real-life Charles Schmid and his murders of three teenage girls ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen. Unlike Schmid’s other two teenage victims, Alleen Rowe was fifteen just like Connie in the short story. (Wiedemann, 1997) Joyce Carol Oates an American

Oates graduated from Williamsville Central High School, where she had written for the school newspaper. She went to Syracuse University under a New York State Regents Scholarship, she was the first person in her family to attend college. In 1959 she was selected co-winner of the Mademoiselle College fiction award for “In the Old World” and was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa when she graduated in 1960 at the top of her class. Joyce Carol Oates married on January 23, 1961 and later that year she received her M.A. in English. Her first collection of stories appeared in 1963. Oates taught at the University of Detroit from 1961 to 1967. It was said that between the year 1960 and 1970 her writing was violent. Joyce Carol Oates was primarily fascinated in different murder cases and dreams. Many of the short stories, such as “The Census-Taker” (1953), “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966), “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again” (1969), “Queen of the Night” (1979), and “The Seasons” (1985), focus on jarring and unsuccessful encounters or relationships between very disparate personalities. (Mann,

She often finds people and their mysterious personalities. When she writes about violence, she tends to focus more on the victims like the women and the children. She often gets her ideas from the effects of violent events on real human beings and families. (Oates, 1993,1998). There were only two short stories that Joyce Carol Oates connected with. Even though she was close with her family, she felt like she related more with the victims of these stories more so than any of her other stories. The short stories reflected on relationships between parents and their children. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” and “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over