Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Journal

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Journal: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates
Description
The story is about a young girl called Connie who is fifteen. She has a nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors. She also checks other people`s faces to make sure she looks okay. Connie is young, beautiful, and flirtatious and does not like her mother. She has a sister called June whom her mother adores and admires. She is faced with a man who a paedophile is named Arnold Friend. The whole story revolves around Connie getting a dose of reality and how everyone cannot be trusted and how she succumbs to the paedophiles advances in fears of threats made to her by Arnold. The story has these inspiring lines which say "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home..." (Barnet, Burto and Cain, p.320-400)
Analysis
Connie is a beautiful fifteen year old teenager who is envious of her sister, gets attracted to boys, likes to flirt and adores the idea of falling in love. Arnold Friend is a paedophile who tries to lure Connie into his trap and succeeds eventually by the end of the story. Connie is incapable of handling herself in the presence of a stranger and by the end of the story when she concurs to the disgusting advances she loses herself. She is completely changed from a pretentious, boy-crazy, family despising woman to a terrified young naive girl who is scared beyond belief of what atrocities life can hold (Barnet, Burto and Cain, p.320-400).
Interpretation
Connie expected more out of life and thought herself capable of handling herself as an individual however, when she was faced with the dangers that life holds, she succumbe...