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Uncanny In Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

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When meeting people we tend to assume details about them but with time our perceptions alter. We all have experienced this at least once every day when communicating with someone new. Sigmund Freud's "The Uncanny" expresses his development of how something is 'uncanny'. Author Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,?” contains components of the uncanny. This short story involves a character named, Arnold Friend who can be pursued as uncanny because he can be comprehended as someone who has been remained hidden but then has come to light. Oates passage helps understand Freud's concepts of what the uncanny is through familiar and unfamiliar descriptions of this character. Freud's proposition of the uncanny demonstrates Arnold …show more content…

Friend had continued being creepy and making her feel uncomfortable. Connie then started realizing his intentions where to hurt her. She tried to distract him as she planned on going to the telephone. As she ran and went to it, something roared in her ear, she was so scared she couldn’t do anything but listen to the roars. Oates wrote, “She cried out, she cried for her mother, 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” (Oates 1418). She cried for her mother because she needed help, she couldn’t fight it alone, she couldn’t handle independence. Friends “stabbing again and again” wasn’t exactly stabbing but it was her way of saying that she was gone. Right after, Friend was telling her to put the phone back. She kicked the phone away from her. He then clarifies and says, “No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right. She picked it up and put it back right” (Oates 1419). By her way of saying she was gone meant that she lost control, she no longer was resisting, Friend has all control. She put her hand to the screen and she watched herself push the door and there she was walking her way towards Arnold Friend. Oates then says, “the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all the sides of him− so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it” (Oates 1420). The life she dreamt about is over, she lost her chances of proving she’s mature as he takes her to an unfamiliar area without anyone knowing. Her life changes as she deals with consequences of seeking for adulthood as a

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