Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been -Joyce Carol Oates

Nightm be or Reality? Joyce sing Oates manufactures an intrusive plot that causes the lecturer to question events in the layer, Where be You Going, Where Have You Been? She develops this tommyrot featuring a girl named Connie, who has an trifle with a male child at a restaurant that she doesnt know. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, Gonna ask you, baby, and Connie turned away (Oates 210). Startled Connie only precept this son once that night, but the romance goes on, and a few days later he obtains to her hold where she learns that the boys name is Arnold booster station. She is unaware how the boy knows anything close to her, where she lives, and the fact that he knows all about her family and friends. In the short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce chirp Oates creates signifi empennaget details that some reviewers might miss, revelation that Connie is actually having a incubus where Arnold Friend is an ideational character. The day that Arnold Friend came to Connies house she had been go forth at home alone, while her family went to a barbecue at her aunts house. Connie sat with her eyeball closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed (Oates 211).This is when Connie begins to authorize asleep in the story as she is position outside in a lawn chair. Joyce Carol Oates neer directly states she is now dreaming but provides the reader with cues to suggest it. The story reads when she opened her eyes she precisely knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly bluish and still (Oates 211). When a person is dreaming they can be in an unacquainted place and sometimes unaware of where they are. Connie is experiencing these happenings as she wakes up or begins the trip into her incubus. The asbestos ranch house that was now three days old startled her- it sayinged small. She shook her head as if to get arouse (Oates 211). Oates included thi s in the story as a clue to readers that Connie is still asleep. The say as if to get awake, indicates that she shook her head, but it did not wake her up. Arnold Friend shows up at Connies house to convince her to come take a ride with him in his car. He seems nice at first, but she soon realizes how creepy and unusual this boy really is. She keeps telling him to leave and that she does not motive to go for a ride, but that doesnt come off Arnold from attempting to persuade her.Connie refuses to step outside and stays in the house. While she is inside Joyce Carol Oates says, The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before, some room she had belong inside but that wasnt good enough, wasnt going to help her. The kitchen window had never had a curtain (216). This is another example that during a nightmare the place you live can look unlike and unfamiliar, and some things look a bit strange. This is what Connie is experiencing in the story as she examines her surrounding s, and these details are instruction that proves she is dreaming. Seen you that night and thought, thats the one, yes sir.I never needed to look anymore (Oates 217). This is a flashback in Connies nightmare where she is remembering the reality of seeing the boy in real life that triggered the nightmare she experiences in the story. The reader has to infer that things that frighten a person in their life have the ability to develop nightmares because we are worried or fearful, which makes it hard to forget them. Arnold threatens to come inside multiple times if she touches the telephone to prefigure the police. Having a nightmare gives us the capability to create ways to keep the bad guy or in this case, Arnold, away from us.Connie is able to stay safely inside away from him as long as she does not touch the phone. In reality Arnold Friend might come running inside irrespective of if she touched the phone, and drag her out to the car. The very persist sentence in the story says, s o more than land that Connie had never seen before and did not understand except to know that she was going to it (Oates 219). This is the ending of the story right after Connie gave up and agreed to go with Arnold, and she is describing her view as she walks out the door and into his arms.Joyce Carol Oates creates the idea that Connie does not recognize anything around her house, and she had never seen it before. This is an important detail the reader needs to dread in order to realize that Connie is in fact, in a dream. In conclusion, there are some(prenominal) details throughout this story to support the railway line that Joyce Carol Oates develops her story portraying Connie experiencing a nightmare. To well understand this story I had to reread the brisk parts that indicate she is in a dream. Analyzing the story gave me the advantage of nterpreting and discovering this information, because before I explored the text I did not believe it was about a girl having a nightmar e. It is important for any reader to do the same, because the author never directly points out these achievable aspects of the story. There are clues to indicate that Connie was also not in a nightmare, but I free-base more indications leading towards the fact that she was. One clue being that Oates never specifies Connie being fully awake or asleep. So the story is still a mystery in the idea that, is it a nightmare or reality?