Joyce Carol Oates “Where are you going, where have you been?” presents the passage of its protagonist, Connie, a fifteen-year-old girl, from childhood to femininity. At the same time, a story of innocence destroyed by evil emerges. The passage Connie passes through is made possible by the introduction of Arnold Friend into her life. While Connie’s character is thoroughly discussed, little information is given about Arnold Friend. One question that comes to mind after reading the story and several critical essays on it is: Is Arnold Friend real or was he just created by Connie’s mind?
Critics Gretchen Schulz and RJR Rockwood claim that Arnold “was created in Connie’s mind …[ing] there alone (520). They further suggest that Connie created Arnold for a chance to become a woman. Schulz and Rockwood also note that “Connie, like all young people, needs help when she begins to move from the past to the future, when the dangerous inner journey to maturity begins” (152). It’s easy to see good-natured Arnold when viewed this way. If Connie created it, there is no real threat to her life. He is there solely to help her move into another developmental stage in her life.
Connie favors Arnold’s physical appearance, which may suggest that she created him. She appears to be very observant of both the appearance of others and her own. Finding someone who passes their own strict judgment seems more than a mere coincidence. She also approves of his taste in music and clothes. In fact, Arnold seems to be all that would attract Connie. Also, Arnold knows where her family went the day she came to visit and what her sister was wearing. The fact that Arnold seems to know a lot of details about Connie and her family suggests that it was created in Connie’s mind.
Throughout Connie’s conversation with Arnold, she continues to have the feeling that she is looking around her for the first time. For example, Connie walks away from Arnold and enters his house “[t]The kitchen seemed like a place she had never seen before. ”(512) These insights show that she is moving into the next developmental stage of her life, femininity, which is so different from her current stage that she does not recognize it.. what was familiar seems new. This passage is almost finished when it is given to Arnold at the end of the story. He leaves his house, symbolizing his childhood, towards the “land that [she] he had never seen before and did not recognize “(516), which symbolizes femininity.
However, it seems unlikely that Connie created such a threatening character. In her dreams, she thinks of the boy she had been with the night before, “how nice he was, how sweet he always was” (507). Arnold, on the surface, seems to be all that would attract Connie, but on the inside, he is all that would reject her. He’s not the ideal daydreaming guy. He’s too sassy, not like the guys Connie is used to, and he seems to be trying to hide every aspect of his real self.
Arnold tells Connie that he is her lover, which is obviously something that Connie is opposed to. He also threatens that if she tries to wait until her family comes home, “then everyone will succeed” (514). Right after that, he says “… Give me your hand, and no one else will get hurt, I mean, your nice bald dad and your mom and your sister in high heels” (514). He tells her that “no one else” will get hurt, implying that he intends to hurt Connie.
Why would Connie’s mind create a character to help her who also wants to rape her and murder her family? It is highly unlikely that your mind created this horrible character. If Connie’s mind were to create a character to make her a woman, the person is more likely to be like the children in her dreams. Considering that he is still in the childhood stage, he could not create such a complex character. Due to all this incident, Connie becomes a woman, although it is unlikely that her mind created the situation to do so.
Another question that needs to be answered, if Arnold Friend can be assumed to be a real character, and not someone created by Connie’s mind, is: Is Arnold Friend helpful or harmful to Connie?
In “Connie’s Tambourine Man: A New Reading of Arnold Friend”, Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton state that “[w]We should not assume that Arnold is completely evil because [Connie] is afraid of him “and further suggests that” his arrival could be that of a savior “(532). Obviously, Arnold cannot be considered a savior because of his threats of rape and murder. In fact, Joyce Carol Oates created her character based on in a serial killer. How can he be considered a savior? Arnold consequently provides the escape that Connie needs to become a woman, but it seems unlikely that his intention was to help her.
Arnold’s evil and cruel intentions destroy the innocent world Connie had lived in, which symbolically happens when she succumbs to Arnold and leaves the safety and innocence of her world. She then enters an unfamiliar world that symbolizes femininity, but also the evil and corrupt world of Arnold Friend.
Cited works
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, where have you been?” reprinted in Literature: read, react, write. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1991.
Schulz, Gretchen, and RJR Rockwood. “In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where have you been'” reprinted in Literature: read, react, write. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1991.
Tierce, Mike, and John Michael Crafton. “The Man with Connie’s Tambourine: A New Reading of Arnold Friend”. Reprinted in Literature: read, react, write. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1991.