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Transformation In Joyce Carol Oate's 'Where Is Here'

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A couple weeks ago I was left home alone. My mom went out to Los Angeles and my brother slept over his friend's house. I went down stairs to get a glass of water. I heard the sound of the garage being opened . I gave it a second before checking to see what is was because the person who would have opened the garage should have came in already.There was no one. The garage continuously opened and closed for a good 10 minutes but eventually stopped. To this day I still don't know what or who opened the garage. This was supposed to be a nice and relaxing night by myself , but it quickly transformed into a aggravating night I do not want to have again. Transformation obviously creates fear. This can be seen in the following three stories as well. Oate’s “Where is here”,Arthur Tress’ “Dream Collector” and Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over” uses transformation of an ordinary person and an ordinary setting to show us how easily circumstances can change . Joyce Carol Oate’s “Where is Here” transformation scares readers because the story goes from being cheery to frightening . This …show more content…

It is effective because it lets readers create their own stories using their imagination. For instance “Photo 3” (84) shows a young boy with a hooded figure. This picture is probably the creepiest because there is so many scenarios that you could make to go with this picture that brings more than enough imagination to it. In contrast “Photo 4” also lets the readers imagination run wild with the unknowingness of this picture. This proves that these pictures leave readers with questions that will have them thinking. The author probably intended on doing this to have his photo collection remembered. Therefore , the transformation of the photo collection is shown by leaving some uncertainty for the readers to have after they look at the

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