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The Role Of Parents In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

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Essay #2 Parents play a very important role in the lives of their children. If parents do it in the right way, it positively impacts children’s mental and emotional condition. One of the main characters from the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie, does not have that kind of relationships with her parents, with who she can share her thoughts or who to get a good advice from. The main reason of all Connie’s mental and emotional problems is that her parents do not play a good role model for her and compare with the older sister. Being parents is far more than just providing children with food and clothes. It is very important that parents exist in the life of their children, support them, and be a good role model for them. Parents that are not emotionally involved in the lives of their children tend to have kids that cannot find themselves in life and struggle from lack of attention. Lack of parent’s attention and impossibility to find herself is exactly what happens with Connie. Her father does not take part in the family’s life at all. He comes home, eats dinner and never interacts with the family. He is present physically, but not mentally. …show more content…

Connie’s mother keeps picking at her for everything. The mother clearly shows that the older sister June is her favorite. June does everything right and gets praised by her mother all the time. Connie hears almost every day that June saved money, helped clean the house, cooked for the family. When the mother speaks on the phone with her friends, she favors everything that June does, and criticizes Connie. That is the main reason why Connie wants to leave with the first person who asks her to do so. From him she feels the attention that likes very much and does not receive from her family members. She does not feel supported by anyone in the family; everyone only criticizes her, tells her that her own sister is much

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Carol Joyce Oates’ “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?” presents how falling into temptation leads to giving up control and innocence. Though her mother is unapproving of her actions, Connie spends her time seeking attention from male strangers. Home alone, Connie is approached by a compelling creature who convinces her to leave her life and join him on his unknown journey. Through disapproving her family, having multiple appearances, listening to music, and her desperation to receive attention from boys, Connie gives up control of herself losing the purity of adolescents and contributing to her detrimental fate. It is imperative that one should not be controlled because of a desire to impress others.

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The relationship between the two was so bad that Connie had homicidal and suicidal thoughts, “Connie wished her mother were dead and she herself were dead and it would all be over. “(86) Some of the harassment from the mother seemed to come from jealousy. Oates shares some insight into the mother’s past and says she was pretty at one point in time “but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie. ”(85) Her relationship with her father wasn’t much better. In fact, Oates tells us that he didn’t give much thought to anyone in the family because “he didn’t bother talking much to them.”

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