Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?" has four divisions, or stages:
1.
Duality exists within Connie -The exposition presents Connie as a
self-centered fifteen-year-old who "knew she was pretty and that was everything," and
her mind is filled with "trashy dreams." There is a duality about Connie that is
demonstrated with the narrator's description of how she has a blouse that looks one way
at home and another way when she is away from home: "Everything about her had two sides
to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not
home."
2. Duality is generated from the
presence of others - When Connie goes shopping or to a movie beginning
with paragraph six, Connie perpetuates this duality as she goes with boys while her
face gleams with "a joy that had nothing to do with" the boy she is beside or with the
place. There is a "music" that plays that makes "everything so good." Connie
manufactures a dream-like world while she is with boys, using their attentions and
feelings to mirror her own self-love, her "joy." In this dreamlike world Connie
remains; in fact, she even draws her mother into it as her mother "was simple and kindly
enough to believe her." Indeed, another duality is created as Connie and her
mother
kept up
a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something
of little value to either of
them.
3.
Duality is generated as an entity on its own - On the
Sunday that Connie does not join her family, but lies in the sun drying her hair,
"bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music
itself," her duality has overtaken her and is manifested in the devilish person of
Arnold Friend. He is a "friend" to Connie because he has emerged from her own sinful
conceit; he is her own trashy dreams come to life as he drives up while she "bathed in a
glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music (of her mind)
itself." Without the r's in his name, Arnold Friend, is an
old fiend; that is, he is the evil in Connie's sexual and
narcissistic thoughts, thoughts that conquer her. Now, it is Arnold Friend, not Connie,
who "began to mark time with the music."
4.
Duality destroys the reality and conquers Connie - Arnold
dominates Connie as he terrorizes her, "I'm your love. You don't know what that is, but
you will." As Arnold speaks, Connie notices a familiarity to his words, "Connie somehow
recognized them--the echo of a song from last year..." For, the music is the music that
Connie has heard in her own narcissism as she has been with the boys. The devil has
claimed his soul:
readability="10">She was hollow with what had been fear, but what
was now just an emptiness. All that screaming had blasted it out of her....She thought,
I'm not going to see my mother again. She thought, I'm not going to sleep in my bed
again.The progression of
duality is the element which creates the four stages of "Where Are You Going, Where Have
You Been?" This duality is a sinful thing created by Connie and allowed to flourish by
her parents who are not responsible enough to control Connie. As she
is concerned only with outward appearances, Connie's hollow soul is filled with the evil
of self-love and erotic daydreaming, an optimum environment for the devil to enter.
And, this he does. The hooved-beast of her trashy dreams and narcissism pervades
Connie's entire being, destroying her.
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