Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates and the Things They Carried Tim OBrien - Assignment Example

ANALYSIS OF TWO SHORT STORIES Prepared by ------------- Prepared for -------------- -------- Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates Thesis statement The theme of the story “Where Are You Going, Where You Have Been?” revolves round the difference between the appearance and reality and between the amicable love and sexual violence. Theme of the story: The main idea of the story defines the line that exists between fantasy and reality. Fantasies are stunning, beautiful and pure while realities are harsh, cruel and brutal. It is portrayed through two main characters Connie and Arnold Friend. Connie is a fifteen years old girl, a typical adolescent, lover of music, theater and boys. Like all teenagers she is in revolt with the existing norms and is in search of independence. The fact that she is unaware of is that, independence brings with it maturity and responsibility and her tender body and mind are not yet prepared for both. While Arnold Friend on the other hand stands for harsh and brutal realities of the world. He is rough and tough. Might is right for him. He personifies lust in its purest form. Connie is impressed by his modern looks and shinning car, forgetting that all that glitters is not always gold. When dragged forcefully into the bitter realities of life by Friend she loses self-control and confidence. Structure of the story The theme is well developed into a unified story. The scene of the story is set in 1960, the period when women have begun their struggle for independence. The concept of modern woman is not yet very common. The naïve fifteen years old Connie sees the whole world from her own point of view. For the rebellions adolescent the life inside the house is very boring. Her mother is always scolding her and comparing her to her elder sister who “was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother’s sisters.”(Oates 23) Fully aware of her seductive powers Connie is determined to conquer the outside world with her beauty and charm but she is unaware of the forces that are beyond her control. . Exalted in her new discovered power to attract others, specially the high school boys, she finds it easy to control the whole world and lead a life according to her own wishes. She is a perfect epitome of fantasy with her rosy ideas of romance. Appearance is reality for her and everything that exists is real and lovable she “sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were the kind of love, the caresses of love.”(Oates 33) The conflict comes in the form of Friend who is powerful, dominating, vicious and ruthless. Connie resists with all her might but she is forcefully dragged into the bitter realities of the mature world. So the whole story becomes tragic. The end is vague like the real life itself in which so many things are unexplainable and hard to understand just as we are told that she sees “so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognized except to know that she was going to it”(Oates 50) Symbolism in the story Symbolism also plays important part in the development of the main theme. The whole story is the symbol of human life; we start our life in such an enthusiastic manner like Connie and want to conquer the whole world. We are euphoric about our energies and power. Then suddenly the bitterness of the hard realities of life shakes us, shattering our belief and faith on ourselves. We are crushed by the burden of life which is often governed by the evil forces. Life itself is as vague as the ending of the story. It can be interpreted in so many ways but none of the interpretation bears a happy ending. Music is also used as a symbol in order to develop the theme of the story. It is always there in the fore front or in the back ground leaving its effect on all that is going on. Connie loves music and it is present in her head all the time turning her surrounding into an imaginary world where everything is beautiful and she “bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless room, breath in and breathed out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.” (Oates 36) While in the hands of Friend, music becomes a tool of sexual harassment who praises Bobby King just because “he knows where the action is.”(Oates 44) Car is the symbol of freedom and mobility and only the men have cars. The shinning golden color also suggests that all that glitters is not gold. The car is also a symbol of transition that is taking her into an unknown world which is beyond her control and understanding. The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien Thesis statement The theme of the story “The Things They Carried” is based on love and war and highlights the differences between the world of fantasy and the world of reality. Theme of the story The story is set against the background of Vietnam War. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the head of the Alpha Company. All the men have to carry the load of their things on their back according to their needs and ranks. They also carry invisible load of love, fear and superstition. “with each new rotation, the reader go through the list of men and learn more and more…they carried ghost…they carried infections…they carried land itself”(Bloom 23) Each man has his own imaginative world where he can take refuge from the harsh outer realities. The protagonist Jimmy Cross also has the letters and the photos of Martha, although these are not the love letters yet they are the only things that give him solace and comfort. His imagination, again and again, takes him from the gory world of reality to the beautiful world of fancy where he is alone with Martha having romance and fun. These imaginative interludes are recurring with shorter and shorter intervals makings him negligent of his duties. During one such interval one of his soldiers Lavender was shot on his head and he died instantly. This changed the whole personality of Cross. Now we witness a mature and disciplined leader who is facing the realities of war with bravery and volar. Structure of the story In the battle field, all the soldiers of the Alpha Company are carrying the things of necessity. The weight of each item is defined in exact calculation making the story more realistic and believable. The men also carry loads which cannot be weighed on any scale of the world like love, terror, fear and guilt. Most of soldiers are young, facing the brutalities of war for the first time. They are unable to comprehend the utility of fighting and killing. The only escape or refuge they can find is, in the world of their imaginations. The protagonist of the story Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the in charge of the Alpha Company. He carries with him the pictures and letters of Martha, a girl of his college from New Jersey. She has written him some letters although they are not love letters but he pretends as if they are the love letters as “he would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.”(O’Brien 3) He takes escapes in his imagination where he is spending holidays with Martha. In his mind there is continuous conflict between his duties and his escapism. The death of Lavender resolves the conflict and drags him out of the world of imagination into world of reality. He thinks himself responsible for the death. The death of Lavender is also presented as plain and grotesque thing. This incident changes the whole personality of Cross as we are told “he was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It would not help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comfort himself as a soldier.”(O’Brien 16) He burns the letters and pictures of Martha. He decides to throw away the stone. He leads a life more disciplined and well-organized. Symbolism in the story Symbolism plays a very important part in the development of the main theme. The physical and emotional burden that the soldiers are carrying depicts the burdens that we carry throughout our life. There are so many things that we do not need and we do not even use yet we carry them for their own sake. Then there is always a conflict in our mind between the way we want to spend our life and the way we are forced to spend it. In spite of all our discipline, hard work and management we encounter forces beyond our control and apprehension. Letters of Martha are the tool of transition that takes Cross from the real world to an imaginary world where everything is beautiful and controllable. Then the stone send by Martha is an explicit symbol of sex as it gives Cross a sense of physical contact. Compare and Contrast the theme of two stories The themes of both the stories highlight the differences between fantasies and realities. It is always difficult to face the bitter truth presented by life but one has to endure it sooner or later. In the story “Where Are You Going, Where You Have Been?” Connie lives in her own imaginative world, where everything is under her control but when she faces reality, all goes out of her control thus changing her life. In “The Things They Carried” Cross slips into his imaginary world for escapism but the brutal death of Lavender brings him back in the world of realism. The themes of both the stories present conflicts, faced by the protagonists. In “Where Are You Going, Where You Have Been?” the conflict is portrayed in the form of Arnold Friend, who is just opposite to the conceptions of Connie. After passing through this conflict the whole character of Connie undergoes a major change. While in “The Things They Carried” the conflict that Cross is facing is the war. He is too young to give a moral to war. He is more close to life than death which intensifies the conflict. His character also undergoes a complete change after the conflict is resolved. Symbolism plays an important part in developing the themes in both the stories. Different symbols are used to portray the inner and outer feelings of the characters. The results of the transition that protagonists undergo after facing the conflict are quite different in both the stories. Connie becomes a victim of the evil forces and loses her self-control and confidence. Her encounter with reality proves disastrous for her. While Cross shows a clear development of character. After facing the conflict he emerges as a responsible and mature person ready to see the reality. Another main difference between the two stories is the timing when the conflict is introduced. In ‘Where Are You Going, Where You Have Been?” we are fully introduced with Connie, her life style, her habits and then the conflict is introduced in the form of Friend who changes the whole scenario. In “The Things They Carried” when the story begins we are in the middle of the conflict. Then the climax comes in the death of Lavender which brings a major change in the character of Cross. Works cited Oates Joyce Carol, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, USA, Cornell University Press, 1993. Print. O’Brien Tim, The Things They Carried , USA, publisher Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print. Bloom Harold, Bloom’s Guide, USA, Chelsea House, 2005. Print. Read More