In the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, many literary devices are used to convey the change from childhood to adolescence and sexuality. Throughout this tale, Connie, the main character, goes back and forth between innocence and maturity, showing two very different sides. Every time the music plays, Connie is doing mature things or is in grown-up situations, frequently sexual, but as the music fades, she returns to her childlike innocence. .

             The way Connie behaved with friends showed how she longed to grow up and have adult relations. When Connie went out with friends, they would run "across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out" (2). The continual music in these circumstances represents how they try to act older. When she went out, "her walk [could be] languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head" (2). Music always played at their hangout, the local restaurant. They "listened to the music that made everything so good; the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon" (2). In these instances, the music is enjoyable and well-liked by Connie because she wants to be pretty and popular with the boys, rather than innocent and child-like. She constantly thinks about the boys she meets on her nights out, sometimes filling her mind with trashy daydreams. All the boys dissolve into a "single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insisting pounding of the music" (3). She longs to join the adult world and that is the reason she enjoys the music so, it represents that world. When the night ends and she returns home, the music fades away, signifying her return to innocence and departure from the mature location.