Jco:going Where Been Joyce Carol

JCO:Going where Been Joyce Carol Oates's Short Story 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been': Biographical and other Factors Inflected within the Author and her Work

As a writer, the American novelist; short story writer, poet and essayist Joyce Carol Oates "characteristically dramatize[s]... macabre subjects" (Gilbert and Gubar, p. 2277). The purpose of this essay is to explore Joyce Carol Oates's short story of adolescent terror 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been' and to connect some of the core material to be found within this story, e.g., descriptions of would-be and/or actual surprising and otherwise disconcerting events; the imagined or real terror of helplessness; and the significance of class distinctions within literature, in particular.

Joyce Carol Oates's biographical; social; and economic, and political viewpoints and points of departure arguably inflect, visibly and invisibly (and both at once) the author's vision and her selection of particularly literary subjects, and the working out, within her writings, of various themes: literary and perhaps personally-inspired and motivated as well. For example, within Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates (1998), Johnson suggests of Joyce Carol Oates:

her working-class upbringing is lovingly recalled in much of her fiction.

Yet she has also admitted that the rural, rough-and-tumble surroundings of her early years involved "a daily scramble for existence."

Growing up...outside...Lockport, New York, she attended a one-room schoolhouse.... [s]he told stories instinctively... before learning how to write.... [s]he began consciously training herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college. (pp. 18-19)

Within "Where are you Going, Where have you been?," one of Joyce Carol Oates's best-known; widely read, and much-anthologized short stories, the author describes to the reader at key turning points in the narrative (e.g., the "pick-up" scene in the fast-food parking lot that effectively foreshadows the later dissolution of a seemingly self-confident working-class teenager's apparent independence and self-confidence) potentially terrifying, psychologically numbing for the main character; random occurrences of casual actions leading, surprisingly yet not-so-surprisingly, to frightening consequences. Moreover, in this same way within the story, Joyce Carol Oates implicitly points out deceptive possible dangers, real or imagined, that conceivably lurk within the most seemingly familiar and banal environments (and, for that matter, within overactive adolescent minds).

For example, in 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been', Connie, an attractive yet naive (this, however, Connie herself would not ever admit, especially herself: therefore herein lies the condition of possibility for her horrifying imagined near-rape (or worse) at the hands of a predatory-seeming parking lot punk. This carnivorous looking young man (he looks quite mature to Connie) in an old sports car he nevertheless operates with enormous pride comes revving up, like the big bad wolf on 1960's-era sidewalls, to confident Connie's home (which, as it turns out, she does not remember how to lock especially well) - where she is all alone (her parents have left her there and gone off on their own outing today, at her own earlier insistence).

Now evil incarnate (Connie thinks) is here, announced outside by more ever-obnoxious and now much unwanted revving. He wants in, too! Llittle by little as her terror of him increases, this completely-imagined fairy tale wolf (with long shaggy dark hair; gleaming teeth; the-better-to-bite-you-with) comes to Connie's door, smirks, and threatens to (in essence) barge right in and she's not grandma. Alas, the damsel cannot now think clearly (or at all)!

Here, deft but terse descriptions of the looks, attitudes, and actions of Arnold Friend, his accomplice Ellie Oscar, and of the fear they stir within Connie, are what Joyce Carol Oates dramatically employs, here, to underscore the idea (and it is only that) of an exaggerated fairy tale-like symbolic force that exists only in relationship to Connie as prey: thus the (actually) helpless, innocent working-class girl's fear, not only of being hurt, but of being found out as the vulnerable, alone, and frightened person she (and, by association, others her age and class) she truly is.

In 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been' Joyce Carol Oates, based arguably on her own roots, as well as on her obvio0usw fascination, perhaps also stemming from various real or imagined childhood or later experiences from her own modest class background) seems to define working-class evil (either real or imagined) not only through the actions of the evildoer(s), but also from within the imagination of the victim. Oates "describes" the embodiment of evil as that of the predatory older men in the gold jalopy, especially the more talkative and aggressive one, a shaggy-haired individual who calls himself (ironically) Arnold Friend, though he is anything but a friend. As Connie grows more frightened of Arnold's escalating threats, she eventually allows her own imagination to run wild, to the point where she can neither think clearly anymore, nor even manage to use her own telephone to call the police.

The fright-inspiring actions of the fearsome Arnold, are foreshadowed early on, when he warns Connie, the night before, after first noticing her outside a drive-in restaurant: "Gonna get you, baby" (p. 2279). From then on, Arnold's quest to "get" Connie feels, to Connie and the reader, in its dangerous intensity, much like the predatory evilness of malevolent fairy tale characters, e.g., the Big Bad Wolf, or the evil stepmothers (and/or stepsisters) that fix on Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and other innocent young female characters as prey.

The shaggy-haired man who drives "a jalopy painted gold" (p. 2279) first notices Connie at a "drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out" (p. 2278). Like Connie, the reader becomes frightened by the appearance, words, and actions of Arnold and his accomplice "Ellie Oscar," who both seem like evil incarnate, especially after they arrive at helpless Connie's front door, taunt her, threaten her, and refuse to leave.

Connie's fear (and the reader's) then escalates. Ellie keeps asking Arnold "You want the phone pulled out?" (p. 2288), a refrain equally as predictable as when another wolf, in another fairytale, "The Three Little Pigs," threatens in a similarly rhythmic refrain "I'll puff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" Next, Arnold even tells Connie, as she starts to lock her front screen door in hope of protecting herself from him, in a similar wolf-like fashion: