Analysis of fictional narratives and documentary sources

¶ … Fiction with Documentation

"Where are you going, Where have you been

When asked this question, teenage girls like Connie -- past and present -- are faced with few options

Perhaps one of the great hallmarks of a great work of fiction is its ability to appear to have been written for the age during which it is being read, regardless of how far back in time it was written. In other words, Joyce Carol Oates' story might strike a contemporary adolescent or young adult reader as something timeless. Or rather, although it was written during the 1960's, it seems as if it is quintessentially about today's average fifteen-year-old teenage girl. Connie seems to be a perfect Britney Spears wanna-be, disdaining her slightly tubby older sister, refusing to listen to her mother, and glutting herself at the mall in acts conspicuous consumption, and conspicuous, revealing outfits.

Yet, incongruously to the modern eye, the background "Story of Origins" to Oates' tale locates the short story squarely back in the era when it was written, the periods of teenage rebellion of the Beat and hippie generations. (Moser & Johnson 164-165) In such a view, Connie's sexuality is repressed by her prudish society. Adults like her mother attempt to repress her budding interest in sex, but such an interest is brought forth by the appearance of the strange Mr. Arnold Friend in his even stranger car. Of the critics catalogued in excerpts after the story, Mark Tierce and John Michael Crafton argue most explicitly for such a reading, and as such they go most explicitly awry in their view of Connie. Far from seeking a "Mr. Tambourine Man," as Crafton and Tierce allege, Connie is not a repressed sexual being in a society that refuses to acknowledge female longing, rather she is a child in woman's clothing in a society that sees, and than hypocritically ignores female sexuality and the dangers it lays women open to. (Tierce & Crafton 167) She is playing a role just as much as Arnold Friend, as Friend is an adult aping the mannerisms and clothing of teens.

Tierce and Crafton make much of the story's dedication to Bob Dylan, even going so far as to suggest that Dylan, the voice of sexual liberation, 'is' Arnold Friend. But Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton's suggestion that "Oates consciously associates Arnold Friend with Bob Dylan" is difficult to defend, although is true that Connie appears to be happiest when she is exposing herself in a sexual fashion. (Tierce & Crafton 167) However, it also seems as if society gives her few other channels through which to articulate her uncertain sense of an emerging self, a self that she as a woman can seem to catch a glimpse of only in mirrors. In fact, rather than facing a repressive society, Connie seems to be located in a world that offers her no other outlet show that she is not obedient like her older sister than to delight in her physical beauty.

Connie's actual fantasies about boys are undefined. She does not even have a crush on a boy at school. Rather the boys blend into one face, when she falls asleep at night. No adult, she has "a quick, nervous giggle," like a girl, not a woman. (152). Connie has, in essence 'bought' the myth that to be a rebellious young adolescent girl, one must be in love with, or be attractive to boys. She constantly looks at herself in mirrors to see if she is "all right," which is not out of vanity, as her mother accusers her of, but of uncertainty in a self entirely constructed by a false culture, of makeup and posturing.

Arnold Friend has also bought into a myth, namely that by taking on the clothing and the persona of an exciting young high school boy, he can be attractive to a young, high school girl. He does not see Connie as she truly is, rather he merely a representation of female teenage sexuality, ripe for the taking. He misreads her standoffishness, not of the fear it actually is, but as the actions of a coquette -- another myth he 'buys' into, that no means yes.

Connie is so defenseless by the end of the story, that, rather than being frightened of her own sexuality, she has seemingly become disassociated from the body that has been read so wrongly by Friend. She lets him into her parent's home, but retreats, not into freedom, but into the home of her childhood, "she backed away into a place, she had never seen before, some room she had run inside." (162-163) Even "her heart" is no longer solid, as her physical self dissolves in front of Friend's advances, and her home feels like a "cardboard box," like in a fairy tale, no longer providing sanctuary from the big bad wolf or the ogre that Friend is. (163)