The Inevitable Doom and Its Symbolism in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been - Book Report/Review Example

The Inevitable Doom and its Symbolism in“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Introduction “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Is a short story by Joyce Carol Oates who appeared phenomenally in the literary scene in the mid 1960s. Oates is a prolific writer born in 1938 in a rural working class family. Oates grew up in Millersport, New York which is described as being hardly a community, “it was a farm and another farm, and a creek”. She became interested in writing after receiving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  as a present from her grand mother. In her teens, Oates was engrossed in works by authors like Faulkner, Hemingway and Thoreau, which inspired her to write. After receiving a typewriter as a gift from her grangmother, she embarked on serious writing (Edelmariam). The story first appeared in 1966 in the Fall Edition of the Epoch Magazine. In this story, the author marks an ever-present symbol of doom that is inevitable. Summary of the plot Connie is a fifteen year-old girl who is quite obsessed with her beauty and has this habit of often looking into mirrors to reassure herself that she is pretty. Her mother notices all this and is constantly scolding her because of her behavior. From the old pictures, one can see that her mother was once pretty too. Connie’s sister June is twenty four and works as a secretary at the same high school that Connie attends. Connie’s father is always away from home because of his work, and whenever he is home, he always reads the newspaper at supper and retires early to bed without bothering to talk to them. Connie is so infuriated by her mother until she wishes that her mother would die, or that both of them would die so that it would be all over. She complains a lot about her mother to her friends. Connie’s mother does not object to her going out with her sister together with her sister’s friends and so occassionally they would go to town where they could move about freely and find something enjoyable to do. Connies has two sides of her life; when she is at home, she dresses, laughs, walks and behaves differently from the way she does when she is away from home. On one of those days out with her friend, a boy named Eddie comes to talk to them in the restaurant and he offers to buy some food for Connie. They leave Connie’s friend at the restaurant promising not to be long and as they are on their way, Connie sees this boy with black, shaggy hair who smiles at her and says, “Gonna get you, baby”. One Sunday, when her parents and sister visit her aunt for a berbecue, she remains at home listening to Bobby King over the radio. After a while, she hears a car coming up the driveway. She wonders how soon her parents would have returned from their visit but to her surprise, she sees the same boy with black, shabby, shaggy hair with his friend, who invites her for a ride in his car. Something about this boy is that he seems very familiar, as if she knew him before, but again it evades her memory. His name is Arnold Friend and he is really strange. Connine is surprised that he knows so much about her like her name, her friend’s name, where her parents and sister have gone and what they are doing at the moment. When she inquires about this, Arnold tells her that she knew him from before, only that she doesn’t remember. Arnold is patient and does not give up on Connie’s refusal to join them for a ride. At first she refuses gently but when he insists, she threatens to call the police if he does not leave their house. Arnold does not seem to be scared of whatever action she might take. He still keeps on asking her to go with him. He does not seem to be shaken with the threat of her calling the police. Arnold promises that he would not force himself into the house if she does not call the police, but if she does; he would enter forcefully and would not leave until her parents come and they would find out what has happened. Ellie, on the other hand threatens to pull out the telephone so that she would not call the police but Arnold warns him sternly agaisnt doing this. In desperation, Connie is confused and does not know what to do since she tries to make the call, instead, she hears loud a noise inside her. She sits on the floor unable to do anything and finally gives in to Arnold’s request to put the phone back and come out of the house with him. She allows herself into his embrace and the story ends with Connie in his arms in a trance-like occurance since she does not seem like herself any more. The Symbolism of Doom and it’s inevitability Throughout Oates’ works, there are recurrent themes, many of them possessing a gothic tone featuring gloom, horror, with themes such as seduction, violence, rape, the supernatural and fear of the unknown. Most of these focus on the effect of violence on the human soul. Most of her stories tend to end in suspense where the reader has to figure out the conclusion of the story. This kind of ending leaves an opening for different kinds of interpretation by different classes of readers, thus allowing a great deal of symbolism to be employd in her works. Connie is in search for her own identity and defies every attempt of her mother to make her to be like the other girls, in this case symbolized by her sister June. This behaviour may be considered what most girls go through in their transition to womanhood. This story has a lot of symbolism used.The title of this story, (Where are you going, where have you been?” immediately captivates the reader into thinking about the past; “where have you been?” introduces the reader to the fact that the past; past actions and experiences will play a major role in the story. “Where are you going?” refers to the future; which leads one to have the notion that this story will reveal a transition for the character Connie from the past into the future. This story highlights beginnings and endings; the end to childhood and innocence, and the initiation into violent sexual assault by this stranger, Arnold Friend. It is interesting to note that Connie herself is not aware of this transition from the past into the future; she is locked into the present and has no awareness of the past or the future. It is also strange that the title of the story does not have the present that might have sounded something similar to “where are you?” yet; this is the only reality that Connie seems to be in touch with and the story always makes the reader aware of where she is. This experience is typical to girls of her age in the American context. It is almost evident that most teenagers do not plan for their future and neither do they gain wisdom from their past experiences to help them make better decisions in the future. Instead, what matters to them is the present. The story teaches us that there are serious consequences in living in the present alone without regard for the future. Thus, the title also serves as a warning for negligence in life, to avoid the trap-door of the”now” and focus on planning for the future, lest one embrace the pain of realizing the “vast sunlit reaches of the land…that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it” (Oates 6). The title of this story also marks the use of allusion to a reference in the bible. This is clearly illustrated by the numbers painted on Arnold Friend’s car where he says, “Now, these numbers are a secret code”. “He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn’t think much of it” (Oates 3). This is explained as quoted in Theriot’s text as: The title of Oates’s story is taken almost directly from Judges 19:17. The translations differ only slightly, but the essence of the passage is the same: Where are you going, where have you been? One of the closest translations to the title of the story is The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures [. . .] which reads: “When he raised his eyes he got to see the man, the traveler, in the public square of the city. So the old man said: ‘Where are you going, and where do you come from?’” The significance of the passage, apart from giving the story’s title, is that Judges is the 33rd book from the end of the Old Testament, the chapter is the 19th, and the verse is the 17th. Thus the numbers “33, 19, 17” refer to this passage. (2) Probably Connie could not have known this since “none of them bothered with church”, and since the Old Testament contained ancient historical texts, she could not have comprehended it since to her, the past was non-existent. Self-centerdness and pride is embodied in Connie as we are made aware in the story. As the saying goes that “pride goeth before a fall”, her pride was a symbol of what fate was to befall her. She “had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates 1). She was preoccupied with herself and could “look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment” (Oates 1). Her looks were all she cared about, and knowing that she was pretty was everything to her. Connie has no faith in the past and does not believe that her mother was once pretty from looking at pictures of her mother’s childhood. She does not embrace the symbol of womanhood represented by her mother. Instead, “Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (Oates 1). Connie’s life revolves around mirrors and music. She has high esteem for romance, beauty and music in which life and love are connoted, since “the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon” (Oates 1). Music always made her to feel good. Theriot notes: “Just as a mirror reflects the appearance of a person, the words of these popular songs reflect Connie and all that she knows, thinks, believes. And like the mirror’s image, the music’s reflection is superficial” (5). This story was dedicated to Bob Dylan, whose music intrigued the author, especially “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The title is also associated with the song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, which dwells on the question “where have you been?” Each stanza of this song points out to the narrator’s experiences of where he had been, what he saw and what he was going to do (Theriot 5). These are not the “hard, fast, shrieking” type and probably listening to such songs woul have given Connie some insight of the looming danger she was about to sink into. The music that binds her like a spell helps to disguise the ill fate that is impersonated in Arnold Friend. Both young men wear sun glasses that hid the reality of their eyes from her. The “glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in miniature” (Oates 2). She was trapped and could not see what was coming. Arnold’s car is also painted bright gold and she cannot look at it well without hurting her eyes due to its brightness. The words “MAN THE FLYING SAUCER” on Arnold’s car come to Connie’s notice but she does not understand them, though they seem familiar. The kids had used it the year before but that year they did not; this is strange. Looking at this closely, one will discover that it represents the reality of Arnold and his companion. They appear modernized as symbolized by the pop culture of “tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt”, but when the reality begins to unfold, he is portrayed as much older with awkward movements that “he almost lost his balance” as he moved. “Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller” (Oates 6). Conclusion All in all, Connie’s phantasy world is shattered; the music comes to a sudden stop, the mirrors and drive-in restaurants become a past that she never thought about, as she enters into a future that is painted in Arnold Friend’s words; “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside your daddy’s house—is nothing but a cardboard box”. She has no past and no future, only the present, with him. She is doomed. Works Cited Oates, Joyce C. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Ontario Review. 1991 Theriot, Michele D. The Eternal Present in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Journal of the Short Story in English 48 (Spring 2007): 1-8. Read More