Oates’ story, In which Are You Heading, Where Have You Been? is the one that has started the interest of various commentators who have read a multiplicity of views in the plot and characters? Several have seen the story as cautionary tale to teenagers. Others have examine Jungian or Freudian archetypes into the story, whilst other folks have crammed it with psychological insight. Certainly, Oates has skillfully used her background, motifs and other elements of fiction (such s point-of-view, foreshadowing, paradox, and symbolism) to color us an account that shows a multiplicity of that means. The element of music that winds through the tale can be one of them. The subsequent essay grows some of these effects
Most readers see the history serving as cautionary experience to adolescents. Connie is a naive restless teenager at the start of the story, commonly, as most teens are, preoccupied with her appearance, and feeling frustrated with her life.
In her soporific, sheltered living, she wishes that she and her mother had been dead (she hates the nagging) and attempts to model her friends just as much as people.
Connie’s life sounds like the life of any modern day American adolescent obsessed with shopping and having a great time. She feels like a perfect middle-class American whose daddy is absorbed in making a small business, whose mom is assimilated, possibly in homemaking or making an enterprise too and Connie attempts to fit in.
The girl dreams and chats of boyfriends as all her friends perform and as all teems perform, reinforced by the books they read, videos and TV SET programs that they watch, and merely their state of life absorbs herself in innocent sex fantasies where she satisfies the perfect idealized stranger who loves her.
Life getting mundane and boring, Connie exults in the pathetic rebellion of coming across the freeway to a drive-in restaurant in order to meet boys. This kind of again, is normal of most teens.
Connie’s lifestyle, however , winds up being tragic for her escapades with Eddie make her encounter a molester who has all the features of being a rapist.
Up until that minute, Connie was a child of fifteen.
As soon as that she begins to watch Arnold, the man in the platinum convertible, more closely and her impacts concretize, the storyplot proceeds in an ominous sluggish pace, and we become more mature as Connie matures along with us.
At first Connie tries to play him up. This is her flirting adolescent streak. When the lady realizes that both this individual and Ellie, his sharer, are far over the age of they try to be, Connie begins to dread, and her fear converts her. She realizes that they can be deceiving her and her fears intensify when the man provides her with exact descriptions of what her parents are performing at that moment at the barbeque.
When Arnold look for her and threatens to harm her family suggesting (it seems) that he was responsible for the death of any neighbor – this is the moment when Connie is no longer the teenager who desired for her and her mother’s death. Rather, she has matured within the space of a few moments and, will no longer autonomous or perhaps belligerent, relinquishes herself to Arnold’s control. The story by itself by sharing with us that Connie believes to their self that she is going to never see her mom again implies that Connie has ceased to be the thoughtless young teenager that we started out the story with. Rather, Connie has matured years ahead of her age and may end up being possibly strolling towards her death. We see that this is very from the final sentence:
“the vast sunlit reaches from the land behind him and all sides of him – a whole lot land that Connie acquired never viewed before and did not identify except to know that the girl was going to it. ” (http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/)
The great expense of land may well represent the infinity of death which, Connie is aware of, is her destination.
II
Other experts, however , notice it as much more than a cautionary tale, browsing into it Jungian or Freudian implications or other emotional innuendoes. All who have supplied it with Jungian overtones see the story as replete with archetypes with all the god fable coming to take those youth and with the youth having to surrender to the god (Quirk, 82).
Freudian analysts see it, as Marie Urbanski does, that Connie is leaving with Arnold because she’s bowing to forces that she simply cannot control (78). Connie are not able to resist Arnold’s seduction and this, in turn, produces psychological discord in Connie’s mind that blurs her thinking and deters her from pondering rationally.
Another critic shows the story a different sort of psychological presentation that in my opinion does not sound right and seems to contradict the story’s story. Tom Dodge believes that Connie is usually readily subsequent Arnold in an attempt to flee the “American dream” that bores her in addition to an attempt to look at the appearing seductiveness of life (88).
Kukowski (online) translates it as appreciate that Connie was searching for. Connie was uncomfortable in the home. She is vindictive to her mom and fed up. Her father is non-communicative to her. Her mother generally seems to prefer June to her. Connie is a bit insecure of herself and her mother would typically fret Connie with remonstrance such as:
You could start to keep your room clean the sister? How’ve you got your hair fixed – what the heck stinks? Locks spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk. inches (http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/)
At this point here was obviously a friend – and be aware, Oates uses that as his last name (“Friend”) – who good remarks Connie and says that he loves her, desires her, and adores her looks.
Relating to Kukowski, therefore , the storyplot is psychological in that it shows the adverse affects that can happen to a love-starve developmental the child years. All kids need add-on from father and mother. When starved of that, they will cling to myths of caring, affectionate interactions and look for it via life.
When Friend came into her life, things changed because he was persuasive, familiar with the world around them, and was aware of the fact she badly wanted someone to love her. She had experienced the photographs of love and sounds of romance through watching videos and hearing music for a long time, and in spite of her age group, she was certain the lady knew how to handle the choices Good friend was making available to her.. ” (http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/)
Friend was the one who provided her with the love that she weren’t getting. Unfortunately, it seems like as thoguh it was an unacceptable kind of like.
III
Connie’s transformation is foreshadowed and dogged by symbolism of music. Music comes up by various instances in the history and it appears to follow the introduction of Connie’s maturity. We have it first inside the restaurant wherever Connie comes alive to requirements of music. It overpowers her. The music then was just like her years as a child at that level:
It built everything delicious: the music was always in the backdrop, like music at a church assistance; it was a thing to rely upon.. ” (http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/)
Her existence was sheltered too. It had been innocent and good, “like music in a chapel service. inch Her home and good friends, however very much they irked her, was something the girl could rely upon.
Music appears later in the car when Connie realizes that Arnold should be deceiving her:
He chatted in a straightforward lilting voice, exactly as in the event he were reciting the text to a tune. His smile assured her that anything was fine. In the car Ellie turned up the amount on his car radio and would not bother to look around at them (http://www.usfca.edu/jco/whereareyougoing/)
The design of music seems to be appearing at crucial periods of Connie’s change, as though that were signaling her move away from anything innocent to something more ominous and insecure. There is the singsong way that Arnold discussions and the fact that Ellie constantly listening to music. Finally
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