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Where Are You Going Where Have You Been Character Analysis

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In the story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates, the main character Connie is continuously trying to find herself and become more independent. Constant fights with her mother lead Connie wanting more freedom and to live her life the way she sees fit and finds an escape in music. Throughout the story, Oates places emphasis on music in each scene, whether it be related to Connie’s second personality, at the diner or the music being played in Arnold Friends’ car. This recurrence of music acts as a symbol for Connie’s hunger for independence. In the beginning of the story, Connie is said to have two sides to her character. One side of Connie is expressed when she is home, where her actions can be described as “childlike bobbing” (Oates 338). Or the side that is exposed when she is out with her friends and described to be “languid enough to make anyone to think she was hearing music in her head” (Oates 338). When Oates says, “hearing music in her head,” it’s as if she is daydreaming. Knowing Connie’s behavior and drive to want to be …show more content…

In the story, Connie hangs out with her friends and goes to a diner where she can flirt with boys without parental supervision. Connie’s reaction to the freedom at the diner is depicted as “Her face gleaming with joy had nothing to do with Eddie or this place: it might have been the music” (Oates 339). This being said, while at the diner, it’s not even the place that brings her joy, it’s the freedom she feels when she is on her own, it’s the “music.” When Connie is leaving the diner, which was essentially her way of living out her freedom, where she was able to flirt with boys and show that second side to her “She couldn’t hear the music” (Oates 339). Now that Connie is going back home where she no longer has that mock adult life, she can’t hear the music meaning she is giving up that freedom to go back to the life of adolescence at

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When going out with friends, she would leave the place where she would be dropped off at and go hang out with boys. Connie loved the attention she received from older guys that she would sometimes daydream about boys, like told in this line “thinking and dreaming about the boys she met” (2).

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Oates used the qualities in these lines in Connie’s dream to express how something in her life is over and that she is losing control of everything. Overall, the song is about mortality which seemed fitting since the life Connie once knew was about to come to an end

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Due to hormones, teenagers are moody and may even lash out at their parents when their parents try to control them. This is the same situation for Connie, even as a girl in the 60s. She wanted to be an

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Connie is seen as a sex object, which shows how women are dominated by men during this time. In this shortstory, Joyce states, “Gonna get you baby” which shows how women are more than likely to be approached when they are by themselves and men tend to think they can talk to a woman any way they please which is a sign of pedaphinilia when there is such a huge age difference. Arnold Friend thinks he can approach Connie in that manner because

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Connie contributes to listening to music that fills her head with ideas about how her life should be lived, rather than deciding for herself. the music has a compelling factor which leads Connie to temptation and allows her to partake in dangerous, misleading

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The beginning of the story, as indicated by Oates, the reader is not only introduced to Connie, but her disingenuous ways as well. Connie, like many typical teenage girls works hard to portray herself as an experienced knowledgeable woman. Consequently, she takes pride in her looks in which she had a, “…habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.” (p. 452)

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“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”  was written by the author, Joyce Carol Oates, the protagonist in the story is a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl named Connie who feels she can not live up to her mother's expectations and feels that her mother mistreats her. Connie wishes her mom and herself were dead, to end the torment she feels. It seems that Connie doesn't have a fatherly figure in her life, her father works long hours and is barely home, and when he is home he buries his head into the newspaper.

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Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates, centered on the protagonist 15 year old Connie. In this short story Oates sets the frame-work for religious allegory- the seduction of a young woman coming to terms with the hand she has been dealt as a result of her choices [you need to something here] similar to that of Eve (Urbanski, 1978). In the first paragraph, we are introduced to Connie who is an eccentric, and spoiled fifteen year old with middle class parents. We become aware of the fact that Connie has an unhappy home life, the story states that her father “was away at work most of the time," and he "didn't bother talking much to them,"(422); as a result, Connie never received any form of love

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In Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Connie is a fifteen-year-old girl, who does not necessarily get along with her family. During the week, she often times goes to a shopping plaza with some of her friends. However, they sneak across the highway to go to a popular diner where the older crowd hangs out at. At home, Connie is often times arguing with her family. One day her family is invited to her aunt's barbecue but Connie refuses to go.

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“But now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.” (Oates ). Also, there is another opportunity for friendship within the family, between Connie and her sister, however, that is lost in their rivalry and hostility. “Her sister was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time – by her mother and her mother's sisters.” ( ).

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1203 Words | 5 Pages

(Oates 12), which means that Connie falls asleep after her family left. Then right in the same paragraph, Oates also tells us that “when [Connie] opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was... She shook her head as if to get awake.” This line shows that Connie is at the start of her dream because the only time we don’t know a place is when we is

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This message is threaded throughout both “Eleven” and “Same Song” in a psychological sense. In the excerpt written by Sandra Cisneros, she treats ages in an entirely new way. Rather than viewing them as milestones to pass and never revisit, Cisneros believes that ages are “kind of like an onion” or “the rings inside a tree trunk,” with each year layering upon the last. The author states that when one’s birthday occurs, they do not immediately feel that age. It may take months to “feel smart” for the age one truly is.

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Like most teenagers she is thinking only in the moment and what is going to please her. Basically Connie and her friend go to a restaurant and this creepy guy named Eddie came in to talk with them, obviously Connie isn’t thinking straight and she leaves the restaurant with this stranger Eddie. Leaving her friend behind. In the book she states “I just hate to leave her like that” (Oates, 391).

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In this story, Oates describes Connie character as a pretty young girl with “long dark blond hair that drew anyone’s eye to it.” (86) Because Connie led two different lives, she would dress and look different at home, then she would with

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Connie’s first encounter with Friend was at a diner when he stated to Connie, “Gonna get you, baby”(pg.1142). Because Connie was use to this type of attention, she did not view it as strange that an older man was calling her in such away. However, if Connie had seen Friend as dangerous instead of just another man, her kidnapping might have been prevented. Later in the story when Friend showed up as Connie’s house, she walked outside and talked to him instead of questioning how he knew where she lived or calling the police. Oates described Connie's interaction with Friend by stating,“Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pullover shirt that was a little soiled and showed the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders”(pg.1145).

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