"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"

In the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," Joyce Carol Oates develops a sense of inevitability in the story of a young girl placed in an untenable position by a situation and a reality that is not that uncommon. From the first, this is a teenaged girl who is part of a family yet who feels separate from that family to a great degree. She has reached the age where she wants to live her own life, yet she is not equipped to do so in more than token ways. She may believe that she is more independent and capable than she is, and this gets her into real trouble when the interestingly named Arnold Friend sets his sights on her. Oates develops her image of teenage life and of its hidden threats through strong characterization and symbolism.

The way Oates uses language in the opening of the story also creates a sense of doom, as if she were speaking of someone in the past tense because something has happened to that person that she is now going to explain:

Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous, giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right (118).

The shopping plaza is symbolic of her bid for freedom. It is the place to which she goes to get away from her parents and to act out being an adult. She and her girlfriends change the way they look when they get there -- "She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and anot

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anyone think she was hearing music in her head" (119); there is music in the drive-in -- "the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon" (120); Arnold Friend talks of music when he is challenging Connie to come outside; and Connie hears music in her head about her situation: Part of his words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and Connie somehow recognized them -- the echo of a song from last year, about a girl rushing into her boyfriend's arms and coming home again -- " (131). The automobile is another symbol of freedom for the teenager -- Connie can only get to the plaza because her father takes her there and then picks her up in his car, and a car would be a means for her to get places on her own if she had one. The car is an inherent symbolic element in the highway that also represents a route to freedom and in the drive-in where older kids hang out, older kids with a car. A boy like Eddie has little appeal except that he has a car: So they went out to his car, and on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might h

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