“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates dives deep in the realm of suspense and the psychological mind. The story revolves around Connie who can best be described as the stereotypical teenage girl who’s shallow mind focuses on her appearance and her male counterparts. The tone of the story starts off light-hearted depicting Connie’s halcyon days of summer adolescence. However the tone shifts dramatically to a more mystical and suspenseful element when a man named Arnold Friend suddenly arrives at her house. Connie is quizzical about the fact that this strange older looking “boy” arrives at her house with his friend Ellie. However, careless Connie, ignorant of all precautions pertaining to stranger, takes anxious joy in the arrival of the new stranger when Oates writes “Her heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at her …show more content…
The point of view of the story, which is third person limited, adds more of a suspenseful tone to the short story as the author does exceptionally well in revealing Connie’s thoughts and actions. Furthermore when the author writes “She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place never seen before, some room she had run on the inside but that wasn’t good enough, wasn’t going to help her”, the reader can vividly imagine how adrenaline filled Connie felt and this gives the overall story life. Symbols remain very evident in this novel, from the Arnold Friend written on the side of the car, to the numbers “33, 19, and 17” that Friend read off. 33. 19, and 17, numbers in which Connie didn’t realize much of and what Friend referred to as a “secret code” can actually mean a lot more. 33, 19, and 17 could be used to refer to the age of the victims that Friend previously raped and murdered. The reader can infer this by the obvious psychopathic tendencies Arnold Friend possesses, which includes a disregard for human feelings and a great ability to manipulate people and mimic human