A lot of clues in the story hinted that Arnold Friend wasn’t a friend at all, but was a demon that came to take Connie away. When Arnold Friend was first introduced, Connie kept an uneasy feeling about him and felt intrigued by his presence. For example, Arnold immediately starts to ask Connie if she wants to come for a ride. (Oates 1012). Arnold seems to add pressure to Connie from the start and is obviously not there just to take her for a ride. Arnold’s way of talking could possibly even have a sexual connotation that Connie does not pick up on because she’s young and oblivious to the world of sexual pleasures that Arnold lives in. Oates chooses words very carefully to show that Arnold is a devious snake. Connie sees Arnold many times as
“A man has come for her, a rapist …” she says, then compares Connie’s fate to that of another story, by saying “Like Tarwater, Connie is about to be ‘raped by the devil himself. ’”(Oates). Not only does the author herself label Arnold as a “rapist” which would not be surprising, seeing that Arnold states “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away … because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret …” (Carol Oates 104) she also labels Arnold as “the devil”.
As the story progresses, Arnold Friend continues to get pushier until at one point, he enters Connie's house. He comes in because Connie picks up the phone to call the police, however, before that can happen, Arnold Friend comes and attacks her. Oates describes this interaction as, “she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house” (Oates, 8).
The dilemma is he is obsessed with her. “Each stage of Arnold Friend’s unmasking and Connie’s resulting terror and growing hysteria is carefully delineated” (Barstow). The way Arnold acts towards Connie causes her to fear him. Oates characterizes him as a creepy stalker. “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t” (Oates).
She sees the boys who give her attention as subjugations who “dissolve into a single face that was not even a face but an idea” (Oates 675). But soon enough her dreams and music materialize into the shape of Arnold Friend. Arnold Friend is described as a muscular, older, and mysterious character. He seems to be a work of her imagination as he is ultimately an idea she created that would fit into her perfect fantasy world. Connie is defenseless to Arnold Friend’s manipulations mainly because she has no visible identity of her own.
However, this is countered when Connie notes that “he was much older—thirty, maybe more” (315), a fact that frightens her. What Arnold is to Connie is a challenge of her want to be an adult, and a trail of her ability to deal with adult issue. Such as a man who singles her out sexual reason. Her wish to be an adult is something she seeks while passively avoiding it. Her avoidance is marked by day dreams of puppy love romance, like a typical teenager; yet, her attractive flaunt to be mature is presented as if she seeks to be an
13 Sept. 2016. Arnold Friend is a dangerous person who goes to Connie’s house and threatens her. Friend has a pale translucent skin. He appears like a demonic figure; a nightmare not a human being. Ellie was a friend of Arnolds.
Connie uses her attitude and appearance to attract boys. But she is not aware of the reality of the society in which she lives. Connie is living in a fantasy world, but when she gets trapped by Arnold Friend she is put into a scary reality. There
He mysteriously knows where Connie lives and invites himself to drive over to her house. Arnold assumes Connie’s friendship by convincing her that he knows everything and everybody, “I know your name and all about you” (Oates 201) when she never told him her name in the first place. He knew her friends, their names as well as what she did the night before. He also knew exactly where Connie’s family was, at a BBQ at Connie’s aunt Tille’s.
It is quite possible that Connie has just invented Arnold Friend based on her love of music, at one point in the story it seems like Connie is falling asleep while listening to XYZ Sunday Jamboree and all of the sudden Arnold Friend shows up coincidently listening to the same thing. Instead of saying Arnold Friend knows Connie’s name and many things about her because he is the devil, you could say that Arnold Friend knows all of that because he is described as
Don't you know who I am?" to manipulate Connie into coming outside to him on her own to make it seem like it was her idea to go with him. Arnold also told Connie that if she didn’t come outside he would wait for her family to come home and he would harm them (Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, 7). Manipulation is extremely dangerous because it can happen without a person knowing and can lead someone into a dangerous and more likely than not, a fatal situation. Psychopaths try to leave as little evidence as possible to allow themselves to continue to do what they do without getting
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines how the presence of a mother, negatively or positively, affects the development of a child. Victor’s mother, Caroline Frankenstein, dies while Victor is still a young man (he is about 17 years old), breaking their relationship between mother and son. Because Victor loses his bond with his mother, he is unable to act as a mother would when he creates his creature. Caroline Frankenstein’s absence in Victor’s life creates a disunion between the mother and child bond, which is evident in Victor’s creation and his fragmented relationship with the creature. Caroline Frankenstein, Victor’s mother, portrayed a traditional mother in the Frankenstein household, until her death.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” is about a teenager named Connie who is trying to come to terms with her transformation from childhood to adulthood. Through this process, Connie attempts to act older than she is an tries to gain the attention of boys. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Oates portrays Connie as obsessed with men to symbolize how one’s obsession and narcissistic attitude can cause danger to seem surreal. In the short story, Carol Oates describes Connie as having two different personalities, one being a narcissistic attitude.
Connie: The Victim To A Demon The “heroine” of the short story Where Are You Going Where Have You Been written by Joyce Carol Oates has been interpreted in many different ways by many different authors across the globe. They all have their own opinions on why Connie had left her home and walked into the arms of Arnold Friend. Larry Rain makes the argument that Connie was a noble heroine that “chooses the side with the devil [to save her family]” (Rain Gale).
Oates’s biography explained her fiction writing as a mixture violence and sexual obsession. The writing style definitely fits the plot point of this story with both of her literary ingredients being present in not only Arnold Friend but in Connie as well. The Protagonist Connie is presented in a very self-centered way. She is obsessed with her looks and often fantasizes about all the boys she meets.
Connie was unable to see the men's true personality until they removed their glasses, which like Connie, a person who has multiple sides. They use similar expressions throughout the story, for example, “Christ” and the use of the word “dope” this further links the two characters personalities. At the end of the story, after Arthur stops Connie from calling the police, she willingly joins the two men. This shows Connie ignoring her superego- calling the police- to succumb to her id (8, 9). Connie once asks, “how come we never saw you before?” to which Arthur replies, “Sure you saw me before… You just don’t remember” these lines also illustrate the tendency for a person to repress their ultimate desires (5).