Essay on "Where Are You Going"

Essay 4 pages (1506 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates

Teenage self-destruction: Personal Identity that Leads to Self-Destruction among Adolescents.

Oates is a celebrated author with several titles to her name and one of the anthologies of short stories that has been widely read is "Where are you Going, Where have you been." This also doubles up as one of the titles of a captivating story within the anthology too. The story stands out from the rest of the stories within the anthology due to the inspiration behind it as well as the language and the themes encapsulated therein. it'd scary yet captivating and the reader, however scared, cannot afford to stop following Connie, the main character therein, to the very end. Indeed the short story leaves the reader with an aftertaste of what could have happened to Connie thereafter.

Oates indicated that this particular short story was inspired by one of the most followed news of the 1960s on Life magazine of a smooth talking serial killer known as Charles Schmid. Schmid was an older man who preyed on the adolescent girls during that time. However, the most captivating aspect of the serial killing was the abetting of the acts of this criminal by the teenage girls during that period and this is the attention of this story. Oates creatively displays the abnormal acts and cooperation of the average and socially 'normal' teenage girls in helping the person commit and conceal the crimes. Indeed, Oates successfully deflects the readers' attention from the murderer to the victim Connie who gets entangled in the scary murder attempt circle by Arnold Friend.

Basically, the story time setting

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is in the 1960s after the Second World War. This was a period that saw the rise in liberalism, materialisms and emergence of the pop-culture and a total challenge to the moral as well as social conventions. It was a time when civil rights movements were at their peak, feminism was stronger than ever, sexual freedom was advocated for and the issue of adolescent sexuality was a top discussed issue within the American society (Little M., 2013).

Introduction

The time setting is the early 196s and Connie is fifteen years old while the elder sister June is 24 years old. Connie is depicted as the prettier one of the pair and very self-conscious at this time and age. She is always on the mirror and always striving for physical looks perfection, a habit that the mother does o approve of. The mother keeps castigating her for such a behavior but she is not disturbed since she is sure the mother prefers her to the older sister. June is the older sister whose behavior the mother approved of, she was reserved and not conformed to the popular trend of the moment. She is described as "so plain and chunky and steady," facts that made the mother to praise her all the time. The plot starts with a normal Sunday at home since they do not attend Sunday services, there is a barbecue arranged by another family and they were to all attend but the picky Connie skips the barbecue and instead stays at home to wash her hair and listen to rock music as she contemplates over romance with boys. She is alone in the house and the story suddenly shifts when a strange gold-painted car pulls over at her house, in it a man Connie walked past at the drive in the previous evening when she went out for a movie and relaxation with Eddie and another girl friend.

There are quite a number of things that are odd about the man who steps out of the car called Arnold Friend and indeed the man who remains in the car called Ellie. Arnold looked much older yet claimed to be the age of Connie. He has makeup on his face yet forgot to extend that to the rest of the neck hence the difference was quite clear. He also had boots that never quite fitted well as they looked like they were stuffed with some material to make him look taller. Ellie too had makeup despite the obvious old look on his face and chest, indeed described as having the face of a "forty-year-old baby." Coincidentally the two strangers were also listening to the same radio station that Connie was listening to, beaming with rock music. Arnold prevails over Connie to get into the car so that they can go for a Sunday wild road drive. Initially Connie would have loved such an adventure but backs off with the unfolding of the scary moments and details. Arnold momentarily shifts from the soft spoken, smooth person to sexually explicit and violent man as the resistance from Connie goes up. He initially makes it clear that he would not come into the house to get Connie out, but would do so if Connie resisted and called the police. Indeed, he uses the safety of the entire family who are away to be in the hands of Connie as a weapon of getting Connie to peacefully submit to his demands, which she does eventually. The atmosphere is filled with fear and would be violence instead of the romance and good times with boys that Connie was hitherto contemplating while alone. Connie knows Arnold is dangerous and she should not leave the house but she is blackmailed into doing so.

Thematic areas

Connie represented the typical adolescent who transitioned from childhood to adolescent stage of life during the insurmountable confusion and changes introduced by the cultural and social shifts after the WWII as identified hitherto. She wanted to be explorative and discover new heights and frontiers like any other adolescent would do under the changing times. The female adolescent at this time was bombarded by myriad of cultural challenges as a result of the questioning of the status quo that was there before.

Connie seems to be maturing under a different time with different cultures from those that June matured under. This is the sole reason behind the difference in character, personality and mannerism. The environment seems to be shaping behavior here and in the case of Connie in particular. She is trying to fit in among the peers hence the aping of the going to movies and restaurants in town with other girls. At this stage, adolescent girls need guidance and modeling from the parents, a glaringly missing aspect in the life of Connie. We see the other girl friends being accompanied by their parents to window shopping in town and duly guided on as simple issues as time, yet we see none of this with Connie parents. Indeed the family is not even bothered about going to church for the spiritual benefit of the adolescent. This does not make Connie atypical adolescent but a very normal adolescent who missed the modeling of the parents.

Bearing their stage in life, adolescents like Connie would love to have a hero and model, in the absence of the right model, they tend to find substitutes to fill the void. This then pushes Connie to adapting the teenage lifestyle and adores boys with material wealth and anything materialistic to offer her. This becomes her undoing, it is in one of the quest for such material gain and entertainment from Eddie that she is spotted by Arnold Friend who follows her up, getting all the details and striking when she is most vulnerable and all alone in the house. This lifestyle of adolescent girls trying to find identity and attachment as well as modeling from sources around them is common among adolescents like Connie. The inherent danger in it is that it ends up being their ultimate undoing that finishes them morally, spiritually and to the worst physically. The fate… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Where Are You Going" Assignment:

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Format: The final draft of this essay is to be a minimum of nine-hundred well-developed and substantive words, double-spaced in MLA Style. For more information on MLA, see section 46 of the Little, Brown Handbook (LBH). On page 715, section 46c, you will see an example of how to set-up the first page of a document in MLA format. Emulate that example. A cover page is not required. Make sure that your paper conforms to the margin settings for the text of the paper as well as the header. Use Times New Roman, size 12 font. Do NOT use justified margin. Do NOT skip any extra lines. All pages should have a header that includes your last name and the relevant page number. All direct quotes and paraphrases must have MLA style in-text citations. Your essay must include a Works Cited page that references the work(s) which is/are cited in your essay. For citing the primary source (the short story about which you are writing), use as a model example 25 on page 687 in the LBH: *****A selection from an anthology (print).*****

Write only in third person; no first or second person point of view is allowed (do not have *****I***** or *****you***** anywhere in your essay). Write about literature in present tense.

Title: Make sure your paper has an informative academic title. Don*****t try to be too creative here. The title is your first opportunity to get into your reader*****s head about what he should expect to read about in your paper. Here is where you begin to make promises to your reader that you deliver upon in the supporting paragraphs of the essay.

Don*****t worry about the length of your title; in fact, in academic writing, longer titles tend to be better. Here is an example of what I am looking for: Childish Dependency: An Analysis of the Male-Female Relationship in Charlotte Perkins Gilman*****s *****The Yellow Wallpaper.***** Notice that all important words are capitalized; nothing is put in italics or underlined; the only thing found between the quotation marks is Gilman*****s published title. Notice that the title of the work as well as the author are both mentioned. Notice that it sets up a promise of what is to come in the paper: analysis from a feminist perspective.

The Introduction: For this essay, write an introduction that appropriately introduces the author and the title of the short story about which you are writing. Start your introduction with a brief, targeted synopsis of the story that leads logically into your thesis statement and plan of development, which concludes your introduction.

Supporting Paragraphs: Make sure that each supporting paragraph begins with a topic sentence that states the main idea of that particular paragraph. Make sure that all information within each paragraph is related to the main idea of that paragraph and that no irrelevant or unconnected information is contained in the paragraph. Make sure that the main idea of each supporting paragraph is fully developed, leaving nothing for your reader to infer about what it is you are trying to say. Don*****t try to say it; say it!

Textual Support: USE IT! Incorporate text (dialogue, narration) from the story and the articles to illustrate and support the points you*****re making in your essay; this lends credibility to your analysis when you back it up with evidence from the text of the story and with what other scholars have said about the story. Make sure that all textual evidence is effectively introduced, smoothly incorporated with your own writing, and fully elaborated upon as to how it illustrates the reason you chose to use it to begin with. You might need to go as far as describing: 1) who is saying the quote? 2) to whom is it being said? 3) in what context is it being delivered? and 4) what does it mean? Explain it. Elaborate upon it. Explain how it helps you make your point and supports your analysis.

The Objective: Use grammatically correct and articulate language to demonstrate in formal academic prose your in-depth thought in critically analyzing one of the following topics which will appear below these preliminiary instructions according to the date published in the Assignment Schedule.

Write an essay about only one of the following topics related to only one of the stories you read for this essay cycle:

"Shiloh"

Write an essay in which you examine in detail Mason's use of third person narration to create characters. How does the author go about revealing the make-up of characters to the reader? What can you deduce about the main characters in the story? Primarily whose story is this? Is one main character more fully developed than the other? From whose perspective do readers mostly see the events in the story unfolding?

In Mason's short story, one of the main characters, Norma Jean, says that she has "this crazy feeling that [she] missed something" (571). At this point in the story, Norma Jean is referring to the sixties songs that she has learned on the organ. Viewing this quote symbolically, what else do you think Mason is implying that Norma Jean has "missed"?

OR

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"

Write an essay in which you examine in detail Oates' message about female adolescence as revealed through Connie. Who is Connie? Is she typical or atypical for an adolescent female? Consider her biology. How is puberty perhaps outpacing psychology in the girl? Might this be common in female adolescents? What is the inherent danger in that?

OR

"The Things They Carried"

Write an essay in which you examine in detail the theme of imagination in the story and how "it was a killer." While Lt. Cross could be the primary focus in your essay, do not focus exclusively on him. Consider at least somewhat that imagination was a killer for the platoon as a collective and for the American soldier in Vietnam in general.

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