This essay argues that Arnold Friend, the antagonist in Joyce Carol Oates's short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", is a prototypical predatory stalker. Drawing on three distinct rubrics — psychological, literary comparative, and public opinion — the paper builds a cumulative case for Friend's stalker status. The psychological rubric applies clinical research on stalker typologies, identifying Friend as a predatory stalker. The literary comparative rubric draws parallels between Friend and Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita. The public opinion rubric examines critical consensus characterizing Friend as a satanic figure, connecting that archetype to predatory behavior.
The paper demonstrates the effective use of multi-framework argumentation: rather than relying on a single mode of evidence, the writer applies three independent analytical lenses to the same claim. This approach strengthens the thesis cumulatively, so that even if one rubric is contested, the others continue to support the argument. The comparison with Humbert Humbert is particularly well executed, identifying specific shared behavioral traits rather than making vague thematic gestures.
The essay opens with a survey of interpretive ambiguities in the story before narrowing to its central claim. It then proceeds through the psychological, literary comparative, and public opinion rubrics in separate sections, each supported by direct quotation. The conclusion briefly recaps the three-rubric framework and declares the argument settled, ending with a confident rhetorical flourish. Total length is appropriate for a close-reading essay at the undergraduate level.
There are many nebulous aspects to Joyce Carol Oates's short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" — for example, the origins of Connie's troubled relationship with her mother (is it strictly a jealousy thing?), the peculiarity of Arnold Friend's last name (what kind of friend is he?), the relevance of those secret numbers that Arnold Friend rattles off ("33, 19, 17"), or even why the story is dedicated to Bob Dylan (is "Bobby King" a reference to Dylan?). But one aspect of the story that is certainly clear is that Arnold Friend is a stalker, a predatory malcontent. It is the purpose of this essay to conclusively demonstrate that Arnold Friend is a prototypical stalker by using three rubrics — a psychological rubric, a literary comparative rubric, and a public opinion rubric — for evaluating his predatory behaviors.
Perhaps it is best to start with the most convincing evidence that Friend is a stalker, and that would be applying a psychological rubric to evaluate his behaviors. According to the study "Study of Stalkers," published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, stalking "refers to a constellation of behaviors involving repeated and persistent attempts to impose on another person unwanted communication and/or contact. Communication can be by means of telephone calls, letters, e-mail, and graffiti, with contact by means of approaching the victim and following and maintaining surveillance" (Mullen, et al.).
Looking at Friend's constellation of behaviors — beginning with his first attempt at contacting Connie at the restaurant, "He wagged a finger and laughed and said, 'Gonna get you baby,'" through to his abduction of her at her home, "This is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll drive away, have a nice ride. But if you don't come out we're gonna wait till your people come home and then they're all going to get it" (Oates) — it is clear that Friend is, per the definition, a stalker who persistently harasses another with unwanted communication and contact.
As instructive and clear-cut as that analysis is, it becomes even more evident that Friend is a stalker when one examines the different types of stalkers described in the aforementioned study. The researchers found five types of stalker personalities: rejected, intimacy seeking, incompetent, resentful, and predatory (Mullen, et al.). Of those five types, it is the last one that most aptly describes Friend. The researchers noted that the predatory stalkers they interviewed "were preparing a sexual attack. These men took pleasure in the sense of power produced by stalking, and there were elements of getting to know their victim and rehearsing, in fantasy, their intended attack" (Mullen, et al.).
Looking at Friend's dialogue with Connie, it becomes apparent that he is certainly preparing for a sexual attack: "Yes, I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will… And I'll come inside you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me," Friend tells Connie (Oates).
Moreover, he has clearly taken the time to study his target — to learn who she is, who her family is, who her friends are. "I know your name and all about you, lots of things," Arnold Friend says. "I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you — like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where and how long they're going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and your best girl friend's name is Betty. Right?" (Oates).
Friend also takes joy in Connie's distress: "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in? — and get away before her people come back?" (Oates). Here Friend is instructing her to feel how vulnerable she is, how exposed she is to him. Friend knows the power he has over her, and he is relishing it.
In those passages, Friend exhibits behaviors characteristic of a predatory stalker: he researched his target, articulated an explicit sexual fantasy, took pleasure in her fear, and directly contacted her for the purposes of a sexual encounter by standing at her front door and demanding she "go for a ride." Using a psychological rubric to evaluate Friend, it is clear that he fits not only the general profile of a stalker, but specifically the profile of a predatory stalker.
If the psychological rubric is not enough to convince one of Friend's stalker status, one can also turn to a literary comparative rubric. In the literary canon there is no shortage of creepy malcontents and stalker personalities that help classify and characterize Friend's behavior.
One of the most notorious stalkers in the literary canon who bears resemblance to Friend is Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. Humbert is a quintessential predatory stalker of the utmost degree. Like Friend, Humbert has a particular fixation on a young girl — Lolita. And also like Friend, Humbert stalks his "nymphet" in the hopes that it will lead to an explicit sexual affair: "My knuckles lay against the child's blue jeans. She was barefooted; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe; and, God, what would I not have given to kiss then and there those delicate-boned, long-toed monkeyish feet!" (Nabokov 51).
Although both share a desire to pursue relations with their subjects, the similarities between Humbert and Friend are best understood by examining the way in which each describes his immediate adulation for the young girl — a fixation that proves to be the driving force behind each man's predatory behavior. Humbert makes the following admission regarding Lolita: "It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight" (Nabokov 221). Friend makes a strikingly similar admission in his conversation with Connie: "Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes sir. I never needed to look anymore" (Oates).
It therefore stands to reason that the impetus behind both Friend's and Humbert's obsession with their respective subjects is a "love at first sight" phenomenon. It is clear to the reader that these characters have psychological problems, as it is abnormal for grown men to become obsessively fixated on pubescent girls. By extension, the reader can understand their predisposition for stalking. If the reader accepts that Humbert is indeed a stalker, then by virtue of the shared characteristics between Humbert and Friend — their sexual expectations and their capacity to become besotted with young girls — one can conclude that Friend is also a stalker.
The truth is that one doesn't need three different rubrics to determine whether Arnold Friend is a stalker — it's pretty evident just by reading the story, assuming one has at least a cursory understanding of what a stalker is. Passages like the following are plentiful and are dead giveaways to Friend's stalker status: "Aunt Tillie's. Right now they're uh — they're drinking. Sitting around," he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie's back yard. "Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. 'Yeah. Sitting around. There's your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch — nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother's helping some fat woman with the corn, they're cleaning the corn — husking the corn —'" (Oates).
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