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Summary Of 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'

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Dangers Women Face in the Literary and Real World An online survey done by Stop Street Harassment in January 2018 revealed eighty-one% of women eighteen and up have experienced a form of sexual harassment. Joyce Carol Oates wrote “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Which is a short story that spreads light on the possible dangers a woman can face. The story follows the main character Connie, and her experiences as a young woman, while being followed and found by Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend’s character is modeled after a murderer at the time who killed three highschool aged girls. In today’s age women should be cautious and aware of their surroundings because dangers can be present anywhere. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have …show more content…

As the story progresses, Arnold Friend continues to get pushier until at one point, he enters Connie's house. He comes in because Connie picks up the phone to call the police, however, before that can happen, Arnold Friend comes and attacks her. Oates describes this interaction as, “she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house” (Oates, 8). If Arnold were stabbing her with a real knife, Connie would not have been able to walk out to his car at the end of the story. However, Connie is guided out by Arnold Friend at the end of the story, so it can be inferred that the stabbing Connie feels is the action of her being raped. This follows the storyline, as earlier Arnold tries to convince her to get in the car with him, then he starts indicating sexual tendencies, which is later followed by threats when she tries to get away. After Connie experiences this horrendous act she feels as though, “She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn’t really hers either” (Oates, 9). Connie displays how her life was taken from her by Friend. In an article by Schulz, the …show more content…

F. "Impure Realism: Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 134, Gale, 2001. Gale Literature Criticism, link.gale.com Originally published in Where Have You Been?, in Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 28, no. 3, Summer 1991, pp. 371-375.
Oates, Joyce C. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?.
Rutgers UP, 1966
Quirk, Tom. A Source For “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Rutgers UP, Studies in Short Fiction, 1978.
Schulz, Gretchen., and R.J.R. Rockwood In Fairyland, without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Rutgers UP, Studies in Short Fiction, 1978
Slimp, Stephen. "Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Short Story Criticism, edited by Joseph Palmisano, vol. 70, Gale, 2004. undefined, undefined. Originally published in The Explicator, vol. 57, no. 3, Spring 1999, pp. 179-181.
Wegs, Joyce M."”Don’t You Know Who I Am?”: The Grotesque in Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Rutgers UP, Studies in Short Fiction,

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