The Minor Portion of
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"
The story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", by Joyce Carol Oates, has been discussed by many critics who try to interpret the story the way the author intended. In Larry Rubin's article, "Oates's 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been'," he states that the story is "Connie's scary encounter with Arnold as a dream-vision or "daymare" - one in which Connie's intense desire for total sexual experience runs headlong into her innate fear of such experience" (58). On the other hand, Tom Quirk's article "A Source for 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'" talks about how the story is really trying to "suggest how her theme of death of the American Dream may have been prompted by these magazines" being the Life, Time and Newsweek articles about Charles Schmid (413). One other argument about this story came from Christina Marsden Gillis' article "'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?': Seduction, Space, and a Fictional Mode," where it was stated that the story is "about endings: the end of childhood, the end of innocence. …
