'Joyce Carol Oates Essay\r'

'‘Where atomic number 18 You Going, Where wear You Been? ’ is a pithy theme written by celebrated author Joyce chirp Oates. The story was origin t come to the fore ensembley create in 1966 in Epoch magazine and selected for The dress hat American Short Stories in 1967 and later win the The O. Henry Award in 1968. The short story’s prominence prompted the creation of a motion picture adaptation in 1986 entitled Smooth bawl out which became the center of several feminist debates. The defining short fiction was inspi inflamed by the Pied bagpiper of Tucson, a teenage killer from Arizona, whom the author ascertain about in Life magazine sticker in the 60s.\r\nUsing details from the real manner version of Arnold assistant †the story’s important embodiment of seduction and evil †Oates crafted a existent fiction that is â€Å"Hawthorian, romantic, shading into parable” (Oates & Showalter, 6) that depicts pureness and the con sequence of its loss. Like the moniker for the real livingspan serial killer and the actual children’s parable, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? ’ features a tale that is while depraved small-minded ruby- personnel casualty Riding jacket and part The Pied Piper of Hamelin adapted to the post fifties innocence coupled with the rude awakening of America.\r\nAt the center of the modern parable is the typical all American girl of the post 50s generation †15 year old Connie †who is portrayed caught up amid the declining innocent sensibilities of the 50s and the rude awakening of the 60s [an emerging assimilation embodied by rock and roll, random violence, umbrage and war]. Connie is said to be the embodiment of the new honorableity emerging in America (Oates & Showalter, 7) and Connie re nonpluss this transitional period by beingness depicted as having two sides to her personality: angiotensin converting enzyme that is worn †Å" ace agency when she was at home and a nonher trend when she was forward from home” (Oates, 509).\r\nQuoting Douglas Griffin â€Å"Connie is clearly a girl of two minds. The first is the standard life of a bo loss teen in what appears to be the traditional post 1950’s home; the blink of an eye is as a teenager on the pamphlet of attachment to music, cars and sex” (1). Despite the fact that Connie is a teenager awakening in the worldly 1960s, her characterisation still had hints of the innocence typical of some unity who grew up through draw a just nowtingly of the 50s. This is probably why Connie was chosen as the perfect representation of the trappings of alternative created by the period marked with boredom: she is the tragic victim of the choice to lose one’s take in innocence.\r\nDespite her depiction as being more akin to the modern teenagers of her beat, Connie’s entire innocence is still [though barely] palpable within the m ise en scene of the story. To determine the state of innocence still present in the protagonist Connie, the best probable preliminary would be to alike(p)n her to the prominent figure that mirrors her in a parable often told children: elfin Red Riding Hood. First it must be none that the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as told by Charles Perrault is a cautionary moral tale that reprehends innocent children of the consequences of listening to the words of a stranger.\r\nThe parable goes as far as to warn women and children of the fauna in sheep’s clothing; that not all wolves are outwardly threatening and that those more or less dangerous are often the tame, obliging and easy (Perrualt). In Perrault’s version of the children’s fable, it was slim red riding chapiter’s sustain trusting words when she first en answered the brute that gave the eat the opening he needed to scheme and lastly eat the unsuspecting child. Like piddling red riding ce iling, Connie in any case failed to realize the presence of the wolf in the woods she was in.\r\nShe saw him, noticed him [Arnold booster shot], but she â€Å"slit her eyes at him and turned away” (Oates, 510) and paid no heed to his declaration â€Å"Gonna purpose you, baby” (Oates, 510). Little red riding hood mistook the wolf’s intentions for friendliness while Connie mistook Arnold chum’s look for plain simple admiration. In this particular situation, it could be said that Connie fell victim to the equal innocent misgivings of a child like little red riding hood did. This like pattern is repeated once once more near the end of both tales.\r\nIn the children’s parable, Little Red Riding Hood once again represented innocence in the form of immature curiosity, asking a series of innocent questions that at last build up to the grim, climactic ending. Here, in her innocence, little red riding hood failed to recognize the wolf disguised as h er grandm other(a), rusely believing the wolf’s answers without taking notice of the signs already in front man of her. In a similar vein, Connie also fell victim to the disguised Arnold Friend in the same way.\r\nIn this particular part of the story, Arnold Friend blatantly presents himself as a friend, talking in a sing-song manner. However, despite being able to â€Å"recognize[d] most things about him, the viselike jeans […] the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, […] that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy languorous smile that all the male childs used to get crossways ideas they didn’t want to put into words […] the singsong way he talked, […] the way he tapped one fist against the other in homage to the staring(a) music behind him […] all these things did not shine together” (Oates, 513).\r\nuntil much later. Again, like little red riding hood, the wolf was already in front of Connie and she did not im mediately notice the threat he posed. Aside from these mirroring qualities between the parable and Oates’ story, Connie also had free-lance characteristics and doingsal hints that reflect her inherent innocence. This presumed innocence sensibly has a childish quality to it, possibly reservation it another mirroring quality between Connie and the child in little red riding hood.\r\nFor example, at the root system of the text Connie was described as having a energetic nervous giggling habit of glancing at mirrors (Oats, 509) †a trait that can be said Connie might dowery with a newborn or toddler who has that recently discovered his/her reflection. Her walk, described as elementary and bobbing, could be seen as another hint. In worldly concern her laugh becomes high pitched and nervous as if she were shy and uncertain. During their nighttimes out at the drive-in restaurant she and her friend would often sit â€Å"at the counter and crossed their legs at the an kles” in [feigned] modesty.\r\nEven the way she dreams her ‘trashy’ dreams has a puritanical signified to it, peppered with an high-flown that is in no way carnal or corrupt: Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how refreshed it always was […] gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs (Oates, 510).\r\nThese descriptions of Connie keystone her to still flummox child-like qualities. She has an ideal she believes in, she has an honest sense about herself and her world, and she possesses the same uncertainties a child would have if cast into a strange world. Perhaps, in Connie’s case this is especially true since she is growing up in a new culture that is not like that of the previous decade. However, being an adolescent l oose to the emerging new morals of the time, Connie is often approach with instances that will challenge her moral choices.\r\nShe is cast as part of a generation that has become bored, a generation that is slowly turning towards anything that would distract them †dismantle for the briefest moments. And in the years the story was based upon, the teenagers of the time has turned to rock and roll, drugs and sex as style of diversion (Moser). Connie in the text is no different. Her head game world â€Å"is the world of James Dean, Natalie Wood and grayback Without a Cause” (Oates & Showalter, 7). She lives in a time where pre-marital sex is romanticized, drugs is an option and teen rising is hyped.\r\nHer exposure to this environment was not solely cooccurring but also consensual. It was always her choice to â€Å"enter[ing] a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for” (Oates, 510). It was always her purpose to go out with boys named Eddie or some other and have their delivers fall back and â€Å"dissolve[d] into a superstar face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the […] night” (Oates, 510). It was her own behaviour and choices that led her to the same woods the wolf Arnold Friend stalked.\r\n‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? ’ has always been argued as an allegory of good versus evil, of innocence and decadence (Oats & Showalter, 9). sure as shooting the character of Arnold Friend is the depiction of evil and of corruption and Connie saw this but turned a blind eye. Friend’s seduction and coercion of Connie near the end of the story is a representation of how one’s choices might consequently invite the rub to drive up right into one’s very own driveway. It was Connie’s choices that spoke to Arnold, the same way little red riding hood told t he wolf, and led [both] the evil right onto her very own doorsteps.\r\nUltimately, â€Å"Connie’s journey down the path of sophistry eventually leads her to a place that she clearly did not intend” (Griffin, 1) and this has left her â€Å"hollow with what had been fear but what was now just an emptiness” as she â€Å"watched herself force back the door slowly open […] moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited” (Oates, 520). Connie, like little red riding hood, was consumed by the wolf. Works Cited Griffin, Douglas. â€Å"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates †An Examination of the Trappings of Choice. ” Www.\r\nBookstove. com. Stanza Ltd. 6 May 2009 < http://www. bookstove. com/Drama/Where-Are-You-Going-Where-Have-You-Been-by-Joyce-Carol-Oates. 36420> Moser, Don. â€Å"The Pied Piper of Tucson. ” Casebook. Oates, Joyce Carol; Laurie Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell (editors). â€Å"Whe re Are You Going, Where Have You Been? ” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing sixth Ed. Cengage Learning, 2006. Oates, Joyce Carol and Elaine Showalter. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 2nd Ed. Rutgers University Press, 1994. Perrault, Charles. â€Å"Little Red Riding Hood. ” Casebook.\r\n'