“Where are you going, where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates follows the passage of her protagonist, Connie, a fifteen-year-old girl, from childhood to adulthood. At the same time, a story of innocence destroyed by evil emerges. The passage that Connie goes through is made possible by the introduction of Arnold Friend into his 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 various critical essays on it is: Is Arnold Friend real or was he just created from Connie’s mind?
Critics Gretchen Schulz and RJR Rockwood state that Arnold “is created in Connie’s mind…he exists[ing] there only (520). They further suggest that Connie created Arnold for the chance to become a woman. Schulz and Rockwood also point out “that Connie, like all young people, needs help when she begins to move from the past to the future, when she begins the perilous inner journey toward maturity” (152). It’s easy to see Arnold as good-natured if she sees him this way. If Connie created it, there is no real threat to her life. He is there solely to help her move to another stage of development in her life.
Connie favors Arnold’s physical appearance, which may suggest that she has set him up. She seems to be very observant of others’ appearance as well as her own. Finding someone who passes your own strict judgment seems like more than just a coincidence. She also approves of her taste in music and clothes. In fact, Arnold seems to be everything Connie would be attracted to. Also, Arnold knows where her family went the day he came to visit her and what her sister was wearing. The fact that Arnold seems to know many details about Connie and her family suggests that he was created in Connie’s mind.
Throughout Connie’s conversation with Arnold, she continues to have the feeling that she is looking around for the first time. For example, Connie walks away from Arnold towards her house where “[t]The kitchen looked like a place I had never seen before” (512). These perceptions show that he is moving on to the next stage of development in his life, femininity, which is so different from her current stage that he does not recognize it. Everything that was familiar to her seems new. This passage is almost finished when she surrenders to Arnold at the end of the story. He leaves his house, symbolizing his childhood, to the “land that [she] never seen before and did not recognize” (516), which symbolizes femininity.
However, it seems unlikely that Connie would create such a threatening character. In her daydreams, she thinks of the boy she had been with the night before, “how good he had been, how sweet always” (507). Arnold, on the surface, seems to be everything Connie would be drawn to, but on the inside, he is everything that would repel her. He is not the ideal guy she daydreams about. He’s too forward, not like the guys Connie is used to, and he seems to be trying to hide every aspect of the true self from him.
Arnold tells Connie that he is her lover, which is obviously something Connie objects to. He also threatens her that if she tries to wait until her family comes home, “then they’re all going to make it” (514). Right after that, he tells her “…give me your hand, and no one else gets hurt, I mean, your cute bald old dad and your mom and your sister with her high heels” (514). He tells her that “no one else” will get hurt, implying that he means 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 her mind created this hideous character. If Connie’s mind were to create a character to turn her into a woman, the persona would more likely be hers than the children in her dreams. Considering that she is still in the childhood stage, she would be unable to create such a complex character. Due to this whole incident, Connie becomes a woman, although it is unlikely that her mind created the situation to do so.
Another question that must 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]I shouldn’t assume that Arnold is completely evil because [Connie] is afraid of him” and further suggest that “his arrival could be that of a savior” (532). Obviously, Arnold cannot be considered a savior due to his threats of rape and murder. In fact, Joyce Carol Oates created his character based on a serial killer. How can he be considered a savior? Arnold therefore provides the escape 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 happens symbolically when she succumbs to Arnold and leaves the safety and innocence of her world. She then enters a world unfamiliar to her, symbolizing femininity, but also the evil and corrupt world of Arnold Friend.
Works Cited
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 Inner Exploration 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.
Third, Mike and John Michael Crafton. “Connie’s Tambourine Man: A Rereading of Arnold Friend”. reprinted in Literature: Read, React, Write. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1991.
