Arnold Friend as a Stalker in Oates's "Where Are You Going"
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.
- Introduction: The Case Against Arnold Friend: Three rubrics introduced to prove Friend is a stalker
- Psychological Rubric: The Predatory Stalker Profile: Clinical research identifies Friend as predatory stalker type
- Literary Comparative Rubric: Friend and Humbert Humbert: Friend compared to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert as stalker
- Public Opinion Rubric: Critical Consensus and the Satanic Archetype: Critics link Friend to Satan, a predatory archetype
- Conclusion: The Preponderance of Evidence: Three rubrics collectively confirm Friend's stalker status
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper organizes its argument through three clearly named rubrics, giving the analysis a logical, methodical structure that is easy for readers to follow.
- It balances close textual quotation from Oates with external evidence — clinical research, a canonical literary comparison, and critical scholarship — lending the argument credibility across multiple registers.
- The writer's voice is confident and direct, signposting each rubric explicitly and acknowledging the limitations of the weakest one (public opinion), which demonstrates intellectual honesty.
Key academic technique demonstrated
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.
Structure breakdown
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.
Introduction: The Case Against Arnold Friend
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.
Works Cited
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Random House Digital, 1955. Web.
Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Epoch, Fall (1966). Web.
Tierce, Mike, and Crafton, John M. "Connie's Tambourine Man: A New Reading of Arnold Friend." Studies in Short Fiction. EBSCO Publishing, 2003. Web.
The New Jerusalem Bible. Ed. Susan Jones. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Print.
Mullen, Paul E., et al. "Study of Stalkers." The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 156, no. 8 (1999). Web.
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