English

Introduction

The article notified in "Heat" could be in writing as a brief report item, accompanied by a sentimental obituary: "The mutilated bodies of eleven-year-old twins Rhea and Rhoda Kunkel were found near Whipple's Ice on major Street. While Joyce Carol Oates uses a number of symbolism to develop the plot and her characters. This assists set up the major topic in the article “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been” which is the coming of age of Connie.

Discussion

Joyce Carol Oates was motivated to write "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"after reading an account in Life publication of a charismatic but insecure juvenile man who had tempted and then killed some young women in Tucson, Arizona, throughout the early 1960s. Transformed into fiction, this story was first released by the literary periodical Epoch in 1966 and was included in Oates's 1970 short article collection The Wheel of Love. Critical acclaim was so swift and certain that as early as 1972, detractor Walter Sullivan documented that it was "one of her most broadly reprinted tales and fairly so." Along with the story's common look in textbooks and anthologies, Oates herself republished it in 1974 as the name article for Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?:Stories of juvenile America. This collection's subtitle points to Oates's ongoing interest in adolescence, particularly the psychological and communal turmoil that arises during this tough period. Her preoccupation with these topics, along with her enthusiastic sense of the special stresses opposite teenagers in up to date society, is apparent in ''Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?''I think Connie opened the screen doorway because she wanted to escape from her life with her family into some kind of fantasy. Ibelieve there were other causes furthermore, but the story points to this one in numerous places. First of all, Connie was not joyous at home. The story states that her father "was away at work most of the time," and "didn't bother talking much to them," so Connie didn't have love from him and had to find male attention somewhere else. Connie discovered her joyfulness in getting away with her ally to the drive-in bistro and daydreaming about boys. But the happiness she discovered in both of these things had not anything to do with genuine events; it is based on a fantasy. When she was out at the drive-in with a boy, her face gleamed "with the delight that had not anything to do with Eddie or even this location; it might have been the music." When she daydreamed about young men, they all "fell back and disintegrated into a lone face that was not even a face, but an concept, a feeling mixed up with the urgent pounding of the music..."

Atopic that runs through this story is that music seems to be the connection from the genuine world into Connie's fantasy world. She doesn't know what she likes, but it's got something to do with "the melodies that made ...