Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? (1966) by Joyce Carol Oates About the story:
The story was originally named "Death and the Maiden". The main character of Oates' story is Connie, a beautiful, self-absorbed 15-yearold girl, who is at odds with her mother—once a beauty herself—and with her dutiful, "steady", and homely older sister. Without her parents' knowledge, she spends most of her evenings picking up boys at a Big Boy restaurant, and one evening captures the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible covered with cryptic writing. While her parents are away at her aunt's barbecue, two men pull up in front of Connie's house and call her out. She recognizes the driver, Arnold Friend, as the man from the drive-in restaurant, and is initially charmed by the smooth-talking, charismatic stranger. He tells Connie he is 18 and has come to take her for a ride in his car with his sidekick Ellie. Connie slowly realizes that he is actually much older, and grows afraid. When she refuses to go with them, Friend becomes more forceful and threatening, saying that he will harm her family, while at the same time appealing to her vanity, saying that she is too good for them. Connie is compelled to leave with him and do what he demands of her. About the author:
Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York, part of Erie County, on June 16, 1938. She grew up on a farm where times were sometimes tough while developing a love for literature and writing. She received her first typewriter as a teen and received ardent support from her parents over her choice of a career as she wrote and wrote through high school and college. She earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University and graduated valedictorian in 1960. She then received her master's from the University of Wisconsin in 1961, the same year in which she wed English student Raymond Smith. Oates took on teaching work at the University of Detroit, and by the end of the decade, had moved on to work at the University of Windsor in Canada. She and her husband went on to work as co-editors on the literary quarterly publication The Ontario Review, and Oates would take on a teaching position at Princeton University by the late 1970s.
Over the decades, Oates has established herself as a highly prolific scribe who has written dozens of books that include novels, shorts story collections, young adult fiction, plays, poetry and essays. Her first published book was the 1963 story collection By the North Gate, followed by her debut novel With Shuddering Fall in 1964. Other notable works among many include National Book Award winner them(1969), a layered chronicling of urban life that was part of Oates' Wonderland Quartet series, and her 26th novel We Were the Mulvaneys (1996), the story of an unravelling family which became an Oprah Winfrey Book Club selection. The novels The Falls (2004) and The Gravedigger's Daughter (2007) were both New York Times bestsellers, while 2012's Patricide was published as an e-book novella. Oates has also written suspense novels under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978, Oates has won scores of awards over the course of her career, including the Prix Femina Etranger and the Pushcart Prize. 'Widow's Story' and 'The Accursed' In 2008, Smith died unexpectedly of pneumonia-related complications. Oates suffered tremendously emotionally, and detailed the depths of her grief in the memoir A Widow's Story. She remarried in 2009 to Professor Charles Gross. In early 2013, she published the novels Daddy Love, which recounts the horrifying experience of a boy who's kidnapped, and The Accursed, a Gothic, surreal tale that looks at Woodrow Wilson's time as the president of Princeton and the violent prejudice faced by the African-American community. Other interesting information: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/09/joyce-carol-oatesinterview-people-think-i-write-quickly-but-i-actually-dont https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnROS8bcTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aARCebcsqrk
Topics for Discussion:
Identify some of the ominous details in the story that foreshadow a tragic end for Connie. In what way does Connie “have it coming” or does she? Is this ironical or just poetic justice? In what ways has her view of the world and of herself been shaped by her “culture”? What elements of the setting help the reader to form an opinion about the culture Connie lives in? What is the significance of the title and the character’s names?