Where Are you Going Where Have you Been? By: Joyce Carol Oates By: Sayf Sbaitan, Hayun Lee

What’s your Impression of them?

Mary Bell is a psychopath. When she was 11 years old, she strangled to death two little boys in Scotswood. Right after the murder, she was laughing innocently and telling her sister “I killed them. Don’t tell anyone.” When she was jailed, she said ”I want to be a nurse because nurse can stab people with syringe as much as they want.” and this shocked everyone.

He is Jeffrey Dahmer. He murdered around 17 boys and men between 1978 and 1991. He was sentenced to life but 2 years after he entered jail he was beaten to death by his fellow inmate.

John Wayne gacy was a serial killer and rapist who was convicted of murdering and sexually abusing a minimum of 33 teenager boys and young men.

Author Name: Joyce Carol Oates She wrote the short story for ‘Bob Dylan’, a famous musician in the 1960’s The short story resembles his song ‘Baby Blue Eyes’

Literary Elements Symbolism of ‘Music’: music is a symbol as it states that she keeps listening to music and that she loves bobby king on the radio which interacts with the daydreaming thinking her life is a musci video and that arnold friends shows her reality and that sthe point where the music goes down Characterization: Connie has different characters. At home, she seems…… While out with her friends….. What’s she like around boys/friends vs whats she like at home?

Level 1 Questions Is Connie perceived as a regular teenager in the beginning of the story? Why does Connie have a difficult relationship with her family? What is her personalities like when she’s around her family and around her friends? Whom did Connie associate with outside of the home? What kind of life did Arnold offer Connie? Why does Connie get into Arnold Friend’s car?

Level 2 Questions Why does Connie have two different, almost opposing, personalities when she’s around her family and around her friends? Why did Joyce Carol Oates used Irony in the name of antagonist (Arnold Friend) ? Why is Arnold Friend strangely attractive to her? How is Connie’s reaction different from what you would expect from what you would expect of a typical victim of kidnap

Level 3 Questions If you were Connie, how would you have reacted to Arnold Friend? (Where Are you Going Where Have you Been Questions) In the end, do you think Connie is a passive victim or a noble heroine? (Where Are you Going Where Have you Been Questions) The setting of the story is 1960s America. Do you think the story still speaks to women today? (Where Are you Going Where Have you Been Questions) Do you think that Connie goes with Arnold Friend to save her family?

Themes Fantasy: Connie is a troubled teenager and finds her escape in the music she listens to. Without any adult guidance in her life, Connie begins to perceive life as it is in the music she listens to – and her ideas of love, life and boys is just as it is portrayed in the songs she hears. Connie’s fantasy world is put to stop when Arnold Friend parks outside her home. Violence: The story wrestles with some of the oldest Big Questions in the history of humanity. What is nature of evil? Why is there suffering in the world? The sinister Arnold Friend seems to take on metaphysical proportions in the text: more than just an individual, he is death, everything that opposes life, love and joy. It’s only in confronting Death that Connie is able to transcend her own individual self and aspire to something higher. But this isn’t just metaphysical horror story. Set in the context of 1960s America, the story also explores how violence might be built into the structure of society, into more and values that some might feel are unjust. (Where Are you Going Where Have you Been? Themes)

THEMES Family Connie’s family seems “normal” in the most conventional sense: a nuclear family with a mom staying home and a working dad, children and family barbecues on Sunday. But it’s precisely this ordinariness that makes Oates’s treatment of family life so disturbing. Most of the attention is drawn to the women of the family, whose relationship are fractured by a society that sees them as little more than sexual, marriageable, domestic objects. Without any more affirmative notion of femininity, the women – sisters and mother – are at odds with one another: they are rivals, but they cant’ seem to be friends. The absence of the father also eliminates the possibility for the daughters to develop a meaningful relationship with an important male figure. (Where Are you Going Where Have you Been? Themes.)

Works Cited “Where Are you Going, Where Have you Been? Themes.” Shmoop. Shmoop University, 11 November 2008. Web. 15 Sep. 2014. Where Are you Going, Where Have you Been? Questions.” Shmoop. Shmoop University, 11 November 2008. Web. 15 Sep. 2014 “Joyce Carol Oates” Wikipedia. Wikipedia,. Web. 15 Sep. 2014.