Abstract
The paper examines Joyce Carol Oates' short stories that deal with children or adolescents and unexpected threats and peril: 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been' and 'Heat'. The paper discusses Joyce Carol Oates' own experiences and her social and political viewpoints and concerns. The paper shows how her narrative style is authentic-sounding and fully convincing. The paper demonstrates how Oates is a feminist and how her feminist concerns are apparent within both stories. The paper also analyzes how Oates is both a nostalgic and a realistic writer.

From the Paper
"For the narrator of "Heat" herself, life after the twins' violent death has simply gone on, with relative non-eventfulness and, ironically, what now triggers her distant memories of the twins and their horrible deaths is when she herself now goes to the area of the icehouse in order to make love. Violence and death was once, the narrator knows, literally "right around the corner" from where she now enjoys the ecstasy of lovemaking, but at the same time the memory of the Kunkel twins' fateful afternoon nearby, so long ago, though it remains sharp and vivid is also, somehow, at the same time, distant and surreal."

Tags:fairy, tale, threats, danger, feminism

Abstract
This paper discusses how both Kate Chopin and Joyce Carol Oates can best be characterized as feminist authors of their respective centuries who show how apparently positive female social roles actually limit women. The paper first looks at how Kate Chopin was famous for chronicling the frustrations and limitations of the role of married women during the 19th century with such novels as "The Awakening" and "The Story of an Hour." In comparison, the paper then examines how Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing.

From the Paper
"The wildly prolific Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing, although a quick review of her works spanning the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, suggests it is more difficult to draw as direct a connection between Oates' major works and biography than it is with Chopin. However, like Mrs. Mallard of "The Story of an Hour" briefly delights in a fantasy coming to life, only to find her hopes dashed when the promise of freedom is taken away, the heroine Connie of "Where are you going, where have you been," finds her fantasy of being seductive and more beautiful than her conventional mother and sister to be far different than she realizes in reality. In Oates, much more explicitly than in Chopin, the trap of femininity 'used' as a vehicle of liberation for the teenage Connie becomes a lie, as Connie becomes the victim of rape and possibly (it is implied) even murder. "

Tags:awakening, connie, like, Mrs., Mallard

Abstract
In this article, the writer describes how the American fiction writer Joyce Carol Oates has not simply tackled issues of national importance in her novels. She also has a substantial critical body of literary essays and works of nonfiction. The writer discusses that over the course of her career, as Oates' has grown more prolific as a writer of fiction, Oates' nonfiction essays and writing have had an increasingly literary rather than a journalistic quality in the tone of Oates' prose, even while their subject matter has tackled issues of national importance. Referring to examples of Oates' literary works, the writer examines the author's concerns and style of writing.

From the Paper
"The review of McCarthy precedes a flight of philosophical fancy, as Oates muses not simply about this novel, but about the style of the author and why his work compels her, and compels other readers, time and time again, despite the violent nature of McCarthy's prose. "No one would mistake Cormac McCarthy's worlds as "real" except in the way that fever dreams are 'real,' a heightened and distilled gloss upon the human condition." (Oates, 2005) Oates shows evident familiarity with the entire span of McCarthy's works, and the reader might have difficulty fully comprehending the review, had the reader not read Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, books that Oates has read and refers to as common knowledge in her analysis of how the masculine and bloody world of the author she is reviewing speaks to the extreme nature of the human life, not just in the Wild Wild West McCarthy chronicles, but in modern times. Her essay on Lear, in contrast, wrestles more with what Shakespearean critics such as Norman Lear have written about the Bard's use of narrative structure."

Tags:novel, style, fiction, author

Abstract
This paper examines how Joyce Carol Oates is known for writing about violence towards women. It looks at how the situations she writes about are everyday situations that women face all over the world all the time and how Oates is excellent in bringing out fear through these situations. In particular, it focuses on ?Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been??, ?Heat?, and ?The Molesters? as typical Oates?s stories where women are victimized by men.

From the Paper
"The villain in this story is Arnold Friend. Oates created a very frightening character here through his appearance and speech. Arnold wears dark sunglasses that do not let anyone see where his eyes are looking. This is quite creepy since he is probably staring her up and down, like a lion checking out his next meal. It is revealed that Arnold is not the young guy that he first claims to be, and is in fact around thirty years old, adding to his villainous nature. Another very disturbing part of Arnold is his friend that is waiting in the car the whole time Arnold is talking with Connie. This man "wasn't a kid either" he had "the face of a forty year old baby" (Where 502). This adds to the fearful appearance of Arnold, since a forty year old man has no place there."

Tags:molesters, victims, violence

Abstract
The writer examines several stories from the collection "I Am No One You Know" by Joyce Carol Oates, specifically, "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," "Curly Red," and "In Hiding". The writer highlights Oates' ability to use everyday language to bring her characters vividly to life, and posits that although these stories deal with depressing events, her abilities in plot, characterization and finding the right details give these stories an uplifting quality.

From the Paper
""The Girl with the Blackened Eye" is narrated by a 43-year-old woman who, at the age of 15, was the victim of a sexual predator and serial killer. "The weird thing that happened to me," she calls it. She is revealing it for the first time. "My husband doesn't know, he couldn't have handled it...no need to drag up the past. I never do. I'm not one of those." Her tone as she describes the horrific ordeal is mostly matter of fact. She herself is aware of her distance from it; her recollection is "...how it might be described by a witness who was there, who was also the victim. But who hadn't any memory of what happened because it happened so fast, and she hadn't been personally involved." Oates's language in these stories is clear and direct and down to earth, nothing fancy as in Proulx or DeLillo."

Tags:language, plot, characterization, narrator

Abstract
The paper studies American author, Joyce Carol Oates, her childhood and writing history. The paper discusses Oates' third book, "Them" about an American family in the 60's, as well as other books by her including "Do With Me What You Will" and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?".

From the Paper
"She loves to write, and can be very compulsive in her habits. When she is not working on a book manuscript, she "relaxes" by working on short fiction and essays. When she first began writing, she worried that some of her more gothic and horrifying fiction would not be taken well if readers knew she was a woman. "In fact, Oates was known to disguise some of her work. Early in her career, she sometimes masculinized her name with such variations as J.C. Oates" (Horne E15). She has also written several suspense novels under the name "Rosamond Smith.""

Tags:Loretta, Wendall, Detroit, Elena, Howe, Arnold, Friend

Abstract
This five-page undergraduate paper discusses what "The Lady with the Pet Dog" and "Life After High School" by Joyce Carol Oates have to say about the satisfactions and frustrations of romantic relationships.

Abstract
This paper explains that In Joyce Carol Oates' popular short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", the seduction of the teenage Connie by Arnold Friend is accomplished through his exploitation of the ideology that was transmitted through the medium of popular rock music. The author points out that the story is set in the American 1950s against the backdrop of drive-ins, the ever-present music conveys a superficial understanding of romantic relationships that forms the basis of Connie's understanding of her emerging sexuality. The paper relates that the prevalence of music in the text lends a mythological or fairy-tale quality to the narrative, which in large part describes the seduction to take place. The paper concludes that, due to the prevalence of a superficial understanding of the world and human relationships that is constructed by pop music culture, Friend is able to use the ideals of such songs as an illusion for his predatory nature.

From the Paper
"Arnold Friend disguises himself in the clothing and mannerisms of the youth of the period, but does so in a manner that seeks not only to imitate others but to embody the ideals projected through the music. His arrival at Connie's house is connected to the music that Connie has been listening to inside her room, immediately creating an illusion of common interest: his transistor radio play "the same program that was playing inside the house." This serves to draw Connie out, initiating a brief discussion of the DJ that is on. Friend appears just a shade different enough from the other boys to create interest."

Tags:seduction, fairy-tale, rock, sexuality, illusion

From the Paper
"This research paper is a literary critique of Joyce Carol Oates' Marriages and Infidelities, a collection of short stories.

Joyce Carol Oates' writing is like a puzzle, whose pieces are either already put into place for you, or whose edges are so obscure that they do not mesh to form a comprehensible design of events. Each piece is exact and fitting in some places leaving some room for intrigue and mystery, or so distorted in other places that the meaning becomes disfigured. But it goes without saying that in all of Joyce Carol Oates' short stories, there is an intensity of feeling which comes charging through the simplicity and starkness of her writing that transcends most of her vague transitions and shadowy relations between characters. Images are not even left to the reader's imagination and description is kept to a minimum. "

Abstract
The paper discusses what gothic means within the realm of literature, and applies it to three of Joyce Carol Oates' stories, "Where have you going, where have you been," "In the Warehouse," and "Silkie." The paper gives a synopsis of each, goes over specific gothic themes and examines if the stories succeed in their gothicism.

From the Paper
"Joyce Carol Oates, a masterful author in "gothic" tradition, shows her literary gravitas and mastery of the genre through three of her works, "Where have you going, where have you been," "In the Warehouse," and "Silkie." First, however, how does one define a "gothic" story? According to the dictionary, gothic literature is "Of or relating to a style of fiction that emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious, and desolate." Often, in a literary sense, one can turn to the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and Victorian storytelling to truly define the genre. Traditionally, It is something that combines horror and romance,..."

Tags:joyce carol oates, gothic, short fiction