Where Is Here?” by Joyce Carol Oates is a short story about the night a stranger comes to visit a family living in the house where he grew up. As the stranger looks around the house, the family becomes more and more uncomfortable with his strange behavior. By the end of the story, his behavior is so strange that the father has to force him to leave. From details in the story including things the stranger says as well as clues from the setting, it seems that the stranger may in fact have been a ghost. The major hints that the stranger is a ghost come from the stranger’s words. At the beginning of the story when he explains to the father why he wants to look at the house, he says he used to live in the house, but then corrects himself and instead of saying “lived” he says he “was a child” there. This could be a clue that the stranger is no longer living. But the biggest clue that the stranger is not alive anymore comes when the mother asks the stranger if his mother is still alive. The …show more content…
First, when the stranger is going up the stairs even though the mother and father did not invite him to, the story states that it was like an uncontrollable force of nature had entered the house. It is possible that this means that a ghost has entered their house. The story also describes the stranger’s reflection in a window as “ghostly” and “insubstantial”, which is an obvious clue that he is actually a ghost. The father also watches the stranger as he leaves the house and seems to just disappear, like he wasn’t a real person at all. Also, after he has left the house seems to change. Everything looks old and faded and the mother seems to have trouble standing up and almost falls down, and there is a strange smell like smoke in the kitchen. The strange, supernatural changes in the house could mean that a ghost has just visited the family and has left behind signs that it was just