Death and Reality in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates :: Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

Death and Reality in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is virtually a immature girls struggle to escape reality while defying authority and portraying herself as a beauty queen ultimately, she is forced back to reality when confronted by a man who symbolizes her demise. The young girl, Connie, is hell- bent on not befitting like her mother or sister. She feels she is above them because she is prettier. She wants to live in a dream domain of a function where she listens to music all day and lives with Prince Charming. She does not come up Prince Charming but is visited by someone, Arnold Friend, who embodies the soul of something evil. Arnold Friend symbolizes Death in that he is going to take Connie away from the world she once knew. raze if she is not dead, she provide never be the same person again, and will be dead in spirit. With the incorporation of irony, Oates illustr ates how Connies self-infatuation, her sole mind for living, is the reason she is faced with such a terrible situation possibly ending her life. Connie is only concerned about her physical appearance. She can be describe as being narcissistic because she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her cope to glance into mirror or checking other peoples faces to make sure her experience was all right (Oates 148). Connie wants her life to be different from everyone elses in her family. She thinks because she is prettier, she is authorise to much more. She wants to live the perfect life in which she finds the right boy, marries him, and lives merrily ever after. This expectation is nothing less than impossible because she has not see love or anything like it. She has only been subjected to a fantasy world where everything is seemingly perfect. This is illustrated in the story when Connie is thinking about her previous encounters with boys Connie sit down with h er eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the nighttime before and how nice he had been, how gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs (151).