Joyce Carol Oates' message of life and transitions is best understood when the reader brings his or her interpretation to meet with the author's intention at a middle ground. In this story of life passages and crucial events, it is imperative that the reader has a solid response to Oates' efforts in order to fully comprehend the message.

The author begins her message with the title of her work, which conveys the idea of passages of time in life. The phrase "where are you going" suggests a time in the future, and the phrase "where have you been" evokes the past. Oates' message continues through the plot and characters.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" consists of two main focus scenes: the world Connie thrives in and the day everything in it changes. The story begins by introduci

Connie is the main character of the story. The story is about her, not the more colorful, but less prominent Friend. Friend may be the most fascinating character superficially because his quirks jump out at the reader, but it is too quick a judgment to say the tale is his.

Another common interpretation of Oates' story is that it is the tale of the sexual awakening, a girl's realization of "the full reality of her sexual nature" (Winslow 238) when she is "entering into sexual experience . . . initiation" (Winslow 238). Somehow Friend is "the answer to Connie's unuttered call and to her erotic desires" (Tierce and Crafton 724). But reducing the story to a tale of mere sexuality is an oversimplification that denies the true power of the piece. Analysts contend that the numbers on Friend's car "add up to 69" (Winslow 239), and his verbal threat to her "is explicitly sexual" (Winslow 239) in nature. Yet these numbers could mean anything; they could be the age of himself and his victims, they could be a secret code only he knows. The numbers are not definitively sexual. Friend's threat to Connie is, on the very basic surface, sexual. But his imposition on her goes far deeper than that. The story is not about Connie's innocence only in terms of sexual matters, although that is a part of it. It is about Connie's youthful incompetence of all things in life. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" deals with Connie's interaction with life in all its facets. Consequently, Friend's invasion of Connie's world is not a purely sexual one, although it does simplify the story to say so. Friend invades her home property and threatens her family and illusion of love and life. Her house becomes, as a result of Friend's appearance, "nothing but a cardboard box" (Oates 713), and her heart "feels solid but we know better" (Oates 713). In short, "the place where [she] came from ain't there anymore" (Oates 713). Friend tears apart every foundation that Connie has come to consider as truth, and sex is just a piece of that.

The day Arnold Friend pulls up Connie's driveway is the day Connie's world of youthfulness is invaded with brutal reality. Before Friend actually shows up, Connie has an experience where she awoke from a dream "and hardly knew where she was" (Oates 705), finding her ranch house looking more old and worn and asbestos- covered than she ever realized before. This is just the beginning of the reality Connie faces that day. Friend comes to Connie's house, attempting to seduce her into going for a ride with him in his beat up gold painted jalopy. The location they are actually headed for is ambiguous, both to the readers and to the characters themselves. Friend himself seems to have no idea where he is going to take Connie, only that it will be away from her house. "It was if the idea of going . . . . Somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him" (Oates 707). The fact that there is no destination in mind is evidence that the future Connie faces, once removed from her cocoon of youth, is itself uncertain. Friend eventually succeeds in luring Connie away from the comfort and protection of her home; the threat of violence to her family by Friend is the catalyst for her relenting. This is proof of Connie's changing values, for the reader recognizes that this is the first time Connie has shown any emotional connection to her family whatsoever. The fact that Friend approaches Connie's house is crucial to understanding what Connie is experiencing. A house has connotations to the reader as a sanctuary, a place where a person (in this case Connie) can be a child protected from the world. Connie's retreating into the house at Friend's approach and her refusal to fully leave the grounds reveals her desperate attempts to cling to the safe world she knows. At Friend's threats she "backed away from the door . . . [into] a place she had never seen before, some room she had run inside" (Oates

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Approximate Word count = 2648
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)