Blog Post #2 "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" -Allison Geviss

The short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" written by Joyce Carol Oats takes on many views. The title alone gives a strange tone to the story. Although I have read this story once before I did not recall how it played out. When reading the title again for the first time in years I got a strange feeling. I expected the story to be about a character wanting to know more about another character. As the story plays on I realized the Connie, the main character is much of a trouble maker. Her jealously of the fact that her mother cares for her older sister June more than she, may have been the cause for her rebellious attitude. "June did this, June did that,... and Connie couldn't do a thing". She wished her family and herself were dead. And without reading any farther I knew that she was going to do something she would regret. No one seems to care what Connie is doing; her mother, her sister, her father and the father who drops them off at the mall. Like Connie when I was younger I craved attention. Connie loves to be the center of attention and craves the attention mostly from males. It shows when she goes to the drive-in restaurant and some boys "lean out of a car window and invite them over". "It made them feel good to be able to ignore him". Connie is young innocent and easily persuaded. Music acts as her "drug" that causes her to act different and do things she might not have without it. "Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the winshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music.
From the very first moment that Arnold Friend is introduced the tone of the story changes. It goes from thinking Connie is going to do something stupid to something bad is going to happen to her. Throughout the Story Arnold Friend puts on a creepy trait. Specially when he says "gonna get you, baby" from his gold car.
The stories verbiage is ambiguous in that the story could be a dream or it could be based off a real story. On the morning of the barbecue when her family leaves she is dreaming quite often. And dreaming about the boys she met. "All the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July". This quote uses words that make you think she is dreaming yet it is very plausible that this happened in real life. After reading an article about this story and how it relates to a real life murder it is hard to think that this has nothing to do with real life. Arnold Friend drives a gold car, may be wearing a black wig, and stuffs his shoes to make himself taller. All facts that were told in the real murder of a young girl.
Connie is a flirtatious young girl who may have been a little too flirtatious. This got her attention, but not the way she wanted. An older man and an accomplice drive up to her house and try to take her for "a ride" while her family is gone. He apparently has been stalking her due to the fact that her knows so much about her. He knows her name, where she lives, what she likes, and what she dislikes. Arnold friend's creepy smirks and pushy tone foreshadows the end of the story. Because there is no real end the reader is expected to fill the gap. The gap for me is filled very quickly. I have taken CSI classes and studied justice for quite a while. I know what happens in the real world to many girls who act like Connie. I fill the gap with the fact that she goes with Arnold Friend and this then taken into a dessert and rapped and murdered like the article on the murder of the young girl like Connie.