Where are you going?
"Where are you going, where have you been?" is a short story written by Joyce Carols Oates, which describes a strange man named Arnold Friend who is obsessed over a young teenager named Connie. Arnold Friend is much older than Connie and cannot be said to be like a child, yet he lures Connie out by using imagery from childhood. He talks to her partly like a lover and a person of authority, he fakes listening to her and guides the conversation into the direction favored by him. Throughout the short story Joyce mainly focus on how Arnold is a devil. In the short story, Oates' writing has the reader to believe that Arnold Friend represents Satan. For example, Arnold Friend states twice to Connie that he will not enter the house without her permission. In one of these situations he defines Connie
Throughout the story Oates constantly referrers to Arnold Friend as his whole name, while she could've easily used pronouns. Thus she underlines the overwhelming presence of Arnold Friend, as a symbolic figure of a devil. Oates also constructs Arnold Friend as Connie's only hope; her universe, her only escape and he alienate her from her house and surrounding. And like a puppet master he controls her strings, pushes her into doing something she would never do consciously, only a devil could do such a thing like this. Arnold Friend tries many ways to get Connie out of her house by hiding his appearance and lying to Connie. For example, when Connie asked Arnold how old he is and he tells her that he's 18 years old but he really looks like he is over thirty (7). Arnold lied about his age because he d
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Approximate Word count = 542
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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