On Joyce Carol Oates's “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

[The story is found online at http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/ ]

Joyce Carol Oates’ story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is justly famous—the ambiguities in the story leave the reader food for hours of thought. It is a story primarily about identity—one’s identity as a child, one’s identity changing as one moves to adulthood, and one’s identity as good and evil. In a way, it is a recapitulation of the myth of the Fall in Genesis 3—but is it a “fall down,” a “fall up,” or both? Connie is not really a bad girl as teenagers go; she is merely typical for her age, looking down on her mother and sister, vain about her looks, and self-absorbed. The antagonist, Arnold Friend (perhaps meaning “are no friend”) is clearly evil, but in asking her to engage in an adult act (sexual intercourse), he represents the “leaving of father and mother” and cleaving to someone else in a sexual sense. There is ambiguity throughout the story—is Connie bad, good, or both? Is Arnold Friend totally evil or does he represent a necessary passage into a world in which the innocence of childhood is lost and the difficult and dangerous transition to one’s identity as a sexual being begins? Is Connie going to be killed by Arnold? The story is based on a series of murders by a manipulative young man very much like Arnold Friend. Or is Connie kidnapped and trapped in a new world which she does not understand, but which will be thrown at her soon? To me, Arnold is the snake, manipulative and evil, calling Connie out into a world of sexuality. The story makes me uncomfortable, for it seems like a Gnostic story that looks down upon sexuality as not only adult, but also evil—or at the best, ambiguous. Connie comes across better in the end by going with Arnold to protect her family from being hurt or killed—thus she grows beyond her self-centeredness—but at what cost to herself?

The distant father also plays an important role in the story—this is clearer if one watches the movie “Smooth Talk,” which is based on the story. Where is his acceptance of his daughter in a painful transition period of her life? At the very least, he shares guilt with the mother whose jealousy and favoritism blind her to Connie’s struggles with identity and growth into adulthood.

The movie presented one possible outcome to Connie’s encounter with Arnold Friend—“consensual” sex and a return to her family—although it seems more likely that Arnold would kill her, at the very least to save his own skin. “Smooth Talk” brought out Connie’s vulnerability more clearly than the story—despite wanting to grow to adulthood, in some ways she is still a child. Her growth takes place when she looks beyond herself and sacrifices herself for her parents and for her sister. In that respect, the story contains a Christian motif.