"Where Are You Going"

Paper Summary:

This paper contends that since Joyce Carol Oates' story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", is based, in part, on a real-life series of rapes and murders, we can only guess that the when the character Connie opens the screen door, her ultimate demise has begun. The paper discusses how the Oates short story gives rise to the fact that women have, to some degree, achieved parity in dating, but sometimes are still prey to manipulating males who consider women as "the weaker sex" and how it is the rights of women that seem to continue to be in jeopardy.

From the Paper:

" Now, having seen some factual comments and suppositions about men versus women, some questions about Oates' short story need to be examined: Why was Connie "ripe" in the sense that there was this flirting with danger with an "older man"? One glimmer of this comes at the very opening, where Connie is continually brought down by her mother: "You think you're so pretty?" (Oates 117). If one's parents put you down and some "older man" comes on to you, what young girl wouldn't be flattered and interested- at least, at first. Next, why did she let him, and later on Ellie, into the house? Surely, her parents had warned her about never letting a stranger in. Again, it is the fact that Connie was getting attention she had not previously received. She dreamed about boys, even went out for hamburgers with one, when she was supposed to be in the movies with one of her girl friends. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Gillis, Christina Mardsden: ""'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?': Seduction, Space, and a Fictional Mode," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter, 1981, pp. 65-70.
• Oates, Joyce Carol: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"In Chapter 2, "Between Genders" in the text: Bachman, Susan: Between Worlds: A Reader, Rhetoric and Handbook Longman (2005)
• Senser, Anna A. "Subversion, Seduction and the Culture of Consumption" University of Toronto (1999).
• Wegs, Joyce M. ""'Don't You Know Who I Am?': The Grotesque in Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'," in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 5, no. 1, January, 1975, pp. 66-72.

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