Where are you going where have you been pdf

Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” uses elements of horror and supernaturalism along with realism to make the story a layered one. The chilling story, based on a newspaper article Oates read about a psycopath called the Pied Piper of Tucson, has been given a variety of interpretations by various critics. To most readers, the loss of Connie to Arnold Friend reflects many fairy tales and certainly the biblical story, the tale of fatal loss of innocence, n this case, not in Eden, but in modern America.

One of the layers of this story is to read it as a fairy tale. It is the story of a young girl, much like "Little Red Riding Hood," too innocent to be able to see through a predator -- either the wolf or Arnold Friend. Connie's "woods" is a shopping center restaurant where other kids hang out, and like Little Red, she goes dressed up -- not in a red hood, but in cute shorts. She thinks Arnold Friend is a boy her age, bamboozled by his costume, much like Little Red sees the wolf dressed up as the grandmother and believes it. Arnold Friend at one point claims he can knock down Connie's house like the wolves of the "Three Little Pigs" fairy tale. The father is completely absent from Connie's life, distant, not taking part in her upbringing, much like the absent fathers, allowing the daughters in "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Little Red Riding Hood," to be victimized. Connie's mother, although willing to argue with Connie about unimportant matters, is much like the stepmothers in fairy tales, caring more about the other daughter, not caring or asking Connie "Where are you going?" and "Where have you been?"

Another reading of the story is the biblical. There are similarities between Arnold Friend and the devil: his disguise, his supernatural knowledge of the whereabouts of Connie’s family, his ability to lure Connie to him against her will, but not to enter her house (Connie has to leave her house -- give her sould to the devil -- by her own will), even his very name, which is purposefully created is more than ironic. By removing the R's, his name becomes "An Old Fiend," Satan himself. Others see it as a tale of initiation into evil, in which Connie is taken by the Prince of Darkness. The place she goes to that seemed sacred to her (the music sounded like church music) was "fly infested." Connie is in a world of moral impoverishment in which only the false and tawdry are revered.