Where are You Going, Where Have you Been
Joyce Carol Oates uses an allegorical figure of immorality to exemplify the subject of enticement. Oates alludes to hell through the character Arnold Friend, as the Satan, and his victim Connie, who invites him in by perpetrating one of the Satans?
The storyteller implies that Arnold Friend is Satan by giving certain hints that the reader can easy infer. The name that Oates gives to the character is one intimation to the reader: Connie looked off from Friend’s smile to the auto, which was painted so bright it about hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at the name, Arnold Friend. She looked at it for a piece as if the words meant something to her that she did non yet cognize. The name friend was normally used by the Protestants to mention to evil or the Satan.
Furthermore, Arnold Friend’s visual aspect besides hints that he is Satan: There were two male childs in the auto and now she recognizes the driver: he had shaggy, moth-eaten black hair that looked as a loony wig. To do the reader think that he is have oning it for a intent, which is hide his Satan? Besides, the fact that Arnold Friend’s eyes are covered is another tragedy usage by Oates to corroborate the premise of the devilish presence. He took off the dark glasses and she saw how pale the tegument around his eyes was it, like holes that were non in shadow but alternatively in visible radiation. His eyes were french fries of broken glass that catch the visible radiation in an good-humored manner? In this quotation mark, Oates suggests that Arnold Friend is concealing something more than an evil? He is concealing his ain demonic visual aspect.
Besides Arnold Friend physical visual aspect, which makes the reader assume that his character is non a human being, Oates gives him supernatural powers that a normal individual could non hold. One illustration of this is the power that he has over Connie; he knows everything that involves her? ‘ Just for a drive, Connie sweetheart.’ Arnold Friend says. ‘ I ne’er said that my name was Connie, she said. ’And he replies: ‘ But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, a tons of things, Arnold Friend said’? The security of Arnold Friend words gives to reader
the feeling that he has been watching her closely and all the clip without her cognizing it or detecting it. This confirms the reader hypothesis that Friend’s is Satan. Furthermore, when Connie tries to conceal from him in her house, Arnold manipulates her into go for thing the house merely by stating her what to make, wish a puppeteer and his marionette: ? You won? T want your household to acquire hurt. Now acquire up all by yourself. Now turn this manner. That’s right. Come over here to me. Now come out through the kitchen to me honey and allow’s see a smiling, seek it, you are courageous sweet small miss . Oates makes the reader infer that Satan’s merely manner to do her comes out is by utilizing his devil powers, because the Satan can non acquire into your house unless you have invited him in. Therefore, he uses his power to hypnotise Connie’s and to do her make what he wants to, which is take her to the hell with him.
The last intimation that Oates gives to the reader is the behaviour of Connie and her household. Connie tempts the Satan by perpetrating the wickedness of amour propre. The storyteller shows how Connie’s vain is one of the chief factors that influences the Satans? She was 15 and she had a speedy nervous tittering wont of stretch outing her cervix to peek into mirrors, or look intoing other people’s faces to do certain her ain was all right. This quotation mark makes the reader visualise a miss that thinks merely of her visual aspect. Oats begins this narrative with this quotation mark to stress the chief cause of the fatal terminal of Connie’s life. Besides, the household’s deficiency of spiritual: One Sunday Connie got up at eleven, none of them bothered with church. Her parents and sister were traveling to a barbeque at aunt’s house . Here, the storyteller emphasis that the household is non involved in any spiritual patterns and this is another door unfastened to Satan to makes his visual aspect.
Where Are You Going, Where Are you Been is a lesson in life with a fatal stoping. The storyteller stresses the deficiency of spiritual disposition and the deficiency of engagement by the household to learn moral values to Connie, mistakes that in the terminal are paid with Connie’s life. Oates moral lesson is well-illustrated by her pick of the allegorical figures and a subject that catches the involvement of the reader, go for thing the reader at the terminal with inquiries of what truly happened to Connie.
