Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates was inspired to write “Where Are Where Have You Been?” after reading an account in Life magazine of a charismatic but insecure young man who had enticed and then killed several girls in Tucson, Arizona, during the early 1960s.

First published in 1966, Joyce Carol Oates's eerie "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" became an instant classic. It's regularly included in literary anthologies of "great" fiction, and better yet, it was even adapted into a popular 1986 film, Smooth Talk, starring Laura Dern.

According to Oates, the story was inspired by a Life magazine story about the serial killer Charles Schmid, who, like the story's villain, was an older man who preyed on adolescent girls. Was Oates struck by the gruesome serial killer? Nope. What stuck with her was "the disturbing fact that a number of teenagers – from 'good' families – aided and abetted his crimes" . It wasn't the twisted psychology of serial killers that intrigued Oates, but the abnormal actions of "normal" teenagers who helped Schmid either carry out or conceal his murders.

Part of what makes Oates's story so freaky is that it deflects most of the attention away from the would-be killer – who is still rendered totally terrifying as the creepy Arnold Friend (shudder) – and directs attention to the victim, Connie, and her "normal" social circle.

The story is set in 1960s middle-American, and the ideological turmoil of the times simmers just below the surface. You know about the 1960s – it was a decade when moral and social conventions were being challenged left and right, and the rush of American optimism and materialism after World War II was being questioned. (Think Mad Men time period.) This was the time of the civil rights movement, the birth of the hippie counterculture, and the wild popularity of rock bands like the shaggy-haired Beatles. Issues such as feminism, sexual freedom, and adolescent sexuality were hot topics.

The story itself has generated controversy since its publication. Oates has described Connie's actions at the end of the story as an "unexpected gesture of heroism," a decision to sacrifice herself so that her family would remain unharmed. But not all critics are convinced. Some read the story as an anti-feminist allegory: Arnold Friend is Connie's punishment for having sexual feelings for boys. Others read the story as a feminist critique of a male-dominated society: the ending is essentially tragic, Connie's submission to Arnold Friend standing for the ways women are oppressed in a patriarchal society. Some even read the last scenes as evidence of Connie's psychosis: there's no ennobling act here, just a fragile psyche falling apart (see Showalter's "Introduction" for a broad sketch of the debate).

Multiple, conflicting interpretations – that's the risk the story takes in leaving the ending open-ended. The "vast sunlit reaches of land" that dazzle Connie at the end of the story may well be the vast array of interpretations that generations of readers bring to it, and why the story continues to captivate us today. So, get reading, and decide what you think of this creepy little story.

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938. As a child growing up in Lockport, New York, her preparation for her future career began early. At the age of fifteen she submitted her first novel to a publisher, but the book was rejected for being “too dark,” since it dealt with a drug addict who is reformed by caring for a black stallion. Such “dark” Themes are common to Oates’s work, including the frequently anthologized story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates completed her college education at Syracuse University in 1960 and earned a master’s degree in English at the University of Wisconsin a year later. This marked a turning point in her life, and her first published collection of short stories appeared in 1963, followed by her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, in 1964.