A Close Look at Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where are you Going, Where Have you been?"

 “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates features a fifteen year old protagonist named Connie. She is quite clichéd and, upon a first read, a static character. She is made up of vanity and naiveté. These attributes cause her to be rather unlikeable and eventually, lead to her presumed demise. In the end, though, when she finally realizes the gravity of her situation, she chooses to sacrifice herself for the good of her family, thus, redeeming herself, in a way, and allowing for the argument of her as a dynamic character to be made.

Connie is quite vain, but this likely stems from insecurity. The narrator opens the story by saying that Connie is always looking in the mirror which she does to make sure her own face is okay, showing both her vanity and her insecurity: “[S]he had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people’s faces to make sure hers was alright.” This is the second sentence in the story. It’s obviously of great importance to the story and as a glimpse into her character.

The narrator tells us that Connie’s mother used to be quite pretty (that is, is photo books do not lie) so, perhaps, Connie is worried that someday she will be like her mom, or, worse, her plain and chunky sister. This vanity and insecurity plays into her naiveté, allowing Arnold Friend’s compliments about and to her to soften her and lower her inhibitions, keeping her in conversation with him. This turns out, of course, to be a very grave mistake.

Oates employs an objective narrator that keeps Connie at the focus. It’s told in third person limited omniscient, but, the narrator gives  the reader enough clues about the danger Connie is in to let the reader in on the truth whilst allowing Connie to continue in her naiveté. This story had to be told in third person limited omniscient from the viewpoint of Connie. Connie herself can’t tell the story because she doesn’t actually know what’s going on, but telling it through someone else’s eyes decreases the tension in the story. She is not aware that there is a story to be told and, by the time she does, she’s too frantically trying to survive to do anything about it. The third person narrator sees what Connie sees and is able to convey that to the reader, even as our protagonist remains in the dark.  This is what builds the tension in the story.

The tone is consistent throughout. Her naiveté runs so deep, even when Connie begins to sense danger, she still seems to have some excuse to explain it away. “’Maybe you’d better step out here,’ he said, and this last was in a different voice. It was a little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.” The different, likely more sinister voice, is blamed on the heat.

Her cluelessness is consistent right up through to the climax in the story, which leaves the reader with little doubt as to what is going to happen to Connie. Her naiveté is snapped—far too late— when she finally reaches for the phone and considers calling the police (though it’s quite likely that her suspicions began to be aroused when she noticed that Ellie, Friend’s partner was “about forty”). Still, even at this critical moment, she sets the phone down and, essentially, giving—perhaps even resigning herself to—her fate. She finally achieves clarity and understanding in the final paragraph of the story when she realizes she is alone and is going to experience something quite dreadful: “[She} was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.” She is also her great moment of heroism and redemption  where she experiences a change, showing her to be a dynamic character at the last possible moment.