STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE STORY “WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” BY JOYCE CAROL OATES.

Born on June 16, 1938, in Lockport, New York, Joyce Carol Oates developed a love for writing as a child and went on to become an acclaimed, bestsellingscribe known for her novels, stories, poetry and essays, winning the National Book Award for 1969's them.  Her first published book was the 1963 story collection By the North Gate, followed by her debut novel With Shuddering Fall in 1964.

The main theme of the story is the life of  Connie.She is a typical 15-year-old living in an American suburb. She doesn't get along with her mom, she's annoyed by her sister, she likes listening to music and watching movies, and she spends a lot of time going out with her friends and meeting boys.

The story is set in America in 1960s. That time and place remains vague, somewhere in mid-century suburban America. The very anonymity of the story’s setting allows it to communicate more universal themes about a country marked by sweeping changes. The 1950s and 1960s saw the beginning of the American Civil Rights Movement and Sexual Revolution, which upended traditional forms of moral authority. 

The message of the story contains the main thought that  immature person can`t make serious decisions.

The plot of the story. Connie, fifteen, is preoccupied with her appearance. Her mother scolds her for admiring herself in the mirror, but Connie ignores her mother’s criticisms. June, who is twenty-four and still lives at home, works as a secretary at Connie’s high school. She saves money, helps their parents, and receives constant praise for her maturity, whereas Connie spends her time daydreaming. While her parents and sister were at the barbeque Connie meets Arnold. Connie tells Arnold he should leave, but he insists on taking her for a ride. She recognizes his voice as the voice of a man on the radio. She tells him to leave and threatens to call the police. He becomes more threatening, telling her that if she doesn’t come out of the house, he’ll do something terrible to her family when they come home.

It is 3d person narration. Observing the story’s events through a narrator who presents things as Connie sees them allows the reader to identify with her terror as she is transformed from a flirt into a victim.

Characters

Connie rejects the role of daughter, sister, and “nice” girl to cultivate her sexual persona, which flourishes only when she is away from herhome and family. She makes fun of her frumpy older sister, June, and is in constant conflict with her family. Her concerns are typically adolescent: she obsesses about her looks, listens to music, hangs out with her friends, flirts with boys, and explores her sexuality. She takes great pleasure in the fact that boys and even men find her attractive. Connie has cultivated a particular manner of dressing, walking, and laughing that make her sexually appealing, although these mannerisms are only temporary affectations. She behaves one way in her home and an entirely different way when she is elsewhere.

Arnold Friend, with his suggestive name that hints at “Arch Fiend,” is an ambiguous figure who may be either demon or human, fantasy or reality. Demon or not, however, his strangely mismatched appearance adds to the threatening quality of his calm voice and seemingly gentle coaxing as he tries to convince Connie to come outside. Despite his strange appearance, Arnold is initially somewhat appealing to Connie in a dangerous way. Although we never find out exactly who or what Arnold is, he is the catalyst that changes Connie from a child to an adult.

The plot of the story has exposition, development of the events ,climax ,anticlimax.

Exposition :" Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and 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. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie. "Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk." Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't bad enough—with her in the same building—she 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. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not."

Development of the events :Connie meets with her friend; She meets some stranger; Once she sees that stranger at the door of her house;Arnold(stranger) wants to ride with Connie ;Connie tries to get rid of Arnold.

Climax: Connie  tries to call the police .

Anticlimax: She decides to ride with Arnold because he frightens Connie to do harm for her family .

The style of "Where Are You Going?" is somewhat journalistic in the sense that there are few excessive stylistic flourishes or cumbersome sentence structures.

There are lexical and syntactical stylistic devices which author uses to depict events more clearly and emotionally.

 Lexical devices:

·        The story's overall structure is an allusion to the tradition of Western European allegory known as Death and the Maiden. Here Arnold Friend is death personified and Connie is his young, female victim. Some critics have theorized that Arnold Friend, with his wild black hair and connection to music, is an allusion to Bob Dylan.

·        Joyce Carol Oates uses powerful, almost surreal imagery to convey Connie's growing panic. In one memorable scene she compares the girl's jerking breath to sexual assault, confusing fantasy and reality. In another she describes an out-of-body experience to communicate Connie's fractured and powerless state.

·        The epithet “She had a high, breathless, amused voice…” characterizes the mother  from the point of view of her daughter Connie for who even the voice of her mother sounds very unpleasant as she hears from her only endless orders and complains and dissatisfaction.

·        Personification: “…but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.” Stresses the main conflict because of which the relations between mother and daughter are so strained and tense.

·       “…her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—“Ha, ha, very funny,”—but highpitched and nervous anywhere else, like the ringing of the charms on her bracelet.” (2)

Oates uses a simile to effectively contrast Connie’s behavior, in this instance her laughter, at home and in public. The image of a jingling charm bracelet, often associated with teenaged girls, encourages readers to imagine Connie’s laugh as feminine and youthful. This contrasts with the more masculine “cynical and drawling" laugh she employs at home. The dual laughs exemplify the split in Connie’s personality. She has developed two personas: one she uses with her family and another used to explore her budding sexuality and ideas of womanhood.

·         

Syntactical stylistic devices:

 Repetition “Their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed.” it brightly express the personality of Connie's father .

Gradation “But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding  of the music and the humid night air of July.”

CONCLUSION

As for me , this story interested me because it combines the usual teenager problems (problems in communication with family and friends, greater attention to their appearance and the guys ,trying to be an adult) with interesting succession of events.

There are so many things that Joyce Carol Oates has done right with this story. She has created characters that are alive, the depth and emotion of Arnold Friend, of Connie, we care about them, we are worried, frightened, and invested. We are caught in a gray area between disliking Connie and rooting for her to get away, we are as uncertain as she is, up until the final moments, where we still think to ourselves that maybe she’ll be okay, maybe he’ll bring her back, maybe she won’t just be another number on the side of the car. But we know better. We have been hypnotized, we have been abducted, the world falling away as Oates has woven a magical tale with layers of imagery, and suggestion, so much to see and digest, so much to understand, our mind chasing the sentences to try and figure it all out. To this day, and I’ve read this story dozens of times, I continue to find new bits of information, one word or sentence sending the plot and outcome spinning. Ahead of its time, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates is a story to be read and re-read, and I hope you’ll do just that.