Possibilities

Joyce Carol Oates based her short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” on “a real-life incident involving a young teenaged girl and a "charismatic" serial killer in Tucson, Arizona.” She brings this incident to life with her two main characters—Arnold Friend, a disturbed and oddly spellbinding killer and his helpless teenage victim, the self-absorbed Connie. Oates uses her characters to craft a fascinating portrayal of how this “charismatic” serial killer might manipulate and abduct his teenage victim. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates grips her readers in an increasing sense of helplessness and desperation by unfolding the character of a deranged killer through the eyes of a naïve teenage girl.

Arnold Friend first enters the story when Connie and her friends are at the drive-in restaurant. Connie notices that he is staring at her and describes him as “a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold” (615). The reader is led to assume from her observations that he is just another teenage boy at the drive-in gawking at her. Days later when Arnold Friend pulls up to her house with his friend, Ellie, to ask her to “come for a ride” with them, Connie still does realize they are not teenagers (617). Initially, Connie treats Arnold like she would any other teenage boy who showed an interest in her. She is “careful to show no interest” in him, she “pretend[s] to fidget” when he tells her that she is cute, and “she couldn’t decide if she liked him…and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn’t come down or go back inside” (617). In addition, she likes the way he is dressed and notes that it “was the way all of them dressed” (618). Nevertheless, there are several clues for the reader at this point in the story that suggests that Arnold is not what he appears to be. The narrator describes Arnold as “sniffing [Connie] as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up,” and his laughter as “all fake” (618). These subtle clues serve to hint at the danger Connie is in and starts to make the reader uneasy.

The reader’s feeling of anxiety and dread increases as Connie’s conversation with Arnold reveals that he has been stalking her and pretending to be a teenager. The reader becomes suspicious that something is amiss with the way he has “taken a special interest” in Connie and has “found out all about her” (618). However, Connie does not grasp the danger and is flattered that Arnold “had remembered her” (618). Only when Arnold names all of her friends and claims to know them, does Connie begin to suspect that Arnold is not what he claims. She becomes suspicious of the expression written on his car’s front fender in black paint, “man the flying saucers” because kids used it the previous year, but not anymore (619). Eventually Connie realizes that all the things about him do not “come together” (619). Connie’s feels dizzy and afraid as she comprehends the total situation that Arnold is not a teenager but a man of thirty or more years. Yet at this point, Connie still does not understand the full extent of her peril.

The reader becomes immersed in Connie’s fear and desperation as she finally begins to comprehend the full extent of her danger. Not only does Arnold refuse to leave but he begins to issue terrifying threats. Arnold warns that he will break down the screen door, light the house on fire, or kill her family when they return if she does not come out of the house. In addition Connie—as well as the reader—is able to clearly see how unstable and deranged Arnold truly is. He terrifies her with statements like “I’m your lover,” “I’ll show you what love is like,” and “I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me” (621). The reader is able experience Connie’s terror and the fear that paralyzes her and prevents her from calling for help. This was Joyce Carol Oates’s intention, to place her reader in a quandary over Connie’s final capitulation. The key dilemma of the story is why Connie in the end surrenders to a rapist and possibly her killer. The reader is left to wonder whether Connie was trying to protect her family, thought she had no other options or simply was too paralyzed by fear. Joyce Carol Oates leaves her readers shaking their heads in frustration over the possibilities. (771)