In 1966 Joyce Carol Oates wrote the very famous story 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". The story was written for Bob Dyan and was some what based on the Arizona serial killer Charles Schmid.
In this story the main character Connie is a 15 year old blond charasmatic girl. In her innocent flirtation ways she meets Arnold Friend. He is older lying about his age and when her family is gone he comes to her house trying to convince her to take a ride with him. She refuses to leave the house threatening to call the police. He just laughs and somewhat threatens her saying things like "Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my promise and can come inside. You won't want that."
She eventually goes with him.
Reading this text I realized Connie was an every day average 15 year old. She was too innocent to think where her flirtatious ways might lead and who they might attract. In the end of the story she goes off to a meadow with Arnold Friend. The sky light changes suggesting they had been there a good long time. He returns her safely to her home where she says "I dont ever want to see you here again"
Some outside text that I read brought up the idea that maybe she was raped and Arnold Friend did it to sort of show her a lesson. What her flirting can lead to. Or maybe she went to save her family. There is a large gap in between the time they left her house and when they returned. I would like to believe that nothing happened to her but growing up in a law enforcement family I know that very rarely does a strange man take a young girl to a meadow for hours and no harm comes to her.
I felt like reading through this text there was a build up to something terrible happening. Those expectations weren't met however and the end of this story was left up to my imagination.
ReplyDeleteHi HN 93 (not sure who this is, so . . . )
You write, “In 1966 Joyce Carol Oates wrote the very famous story 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". The story was written for Bob Dyan and was some what based on the Arizona serial killer Charles Schmid.” If you’re going to bring in this background, offer a few more details/a very brief accounting of the Pied Piper murders – the average reader would need a bit of background.
main character = “protagonist”
“Reading this text I realized Connie was an every day average 15 year old. She was too innocent to think where her flirtatious ways might lead and who they might attract . . . be sure to stay in present tense (“is”, not “was”). Also, clarify theoretical stance by this point. If you’re doing Reader Response, this is a great place to state why you think she’s this average girl – does the text provide cues/signals that invite the reader to perceive Connie this way, or are you bringing ideas/beliefs values to the text that you impose on the character? A bit of both? Regardless, you need to explain how you arrive at this conclusion about how Connie is characterized.
“The sky light changes suggesting they had been there a good long time. He returns her safely to her home where she says "I dont ever want to see you here again.” This happens in the film, not the short story, so you can’t really use this. If you want to make a point about how the film portrays the conclusion in relation to the text you can, but the paper isn’t based on this ending but rather Oates’s open-ended conclusion.
“Some outside text that I read” – which would be? If you reference another text, you need to be very specific. Name article and author/critic. If it comes from the article quoted in the class discussions, then just provide the info (those handouts are all posted in BB, so you could get the author and title as well as quotes from the article).
“There is a large gap in between the time they left her house and when they returned. I would like to believe that nothing happened to her but growing up in a law enforcement family I know that very rarely does a strange man take a young girl to a meadow for hours and no harm comes to her. “ Nicely done here, though I think you can expand. You provide the reason you impose your experience on the text, and you’re very clear, but how, exactly, do you fill in the gap? You write, “I felt like reading through this text there was a build up to something terrible happening. Those expectations weren't met however and the end of this story was left up to my imagination.” I think the text provides enough clues that Connie will be harmed in some manner or another. Perhaps the degree to which this occurs/exact nature of said harm is left to the reader to fill in. So what does your imagination say? What happens to Connie in your version?
A