Connie’S Seeking for Independence

In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, Joyce Carol Oates tells a story about Connie, a beautiful but self-obsessed 15-year-old girl, who has a rebellious feeling against her family, particularly her mother and older sister. Without her parents’ knowledge, she spends most of her evenings meeting boys with her girl friends, and one evening captures the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible. While her parents are away at her aunt's barbecue, two men pull up in front of her house and call Connie out. She recognizes the driver, Arnold Friend, as the man from the drive-in restaurant, and is initially charmed by the smooth-talking, charismatic stranger in his fashionable tight jeans and white T-shirt. He tells Connie he is eighteen and has come to take her for a ride in his car with his sidekick Ellie. Connie slowly realizes that he is actually much older, and grows afraid. As Connie refuses to go with him, he becomes more forceful and threatening, saying that he will harm her family, until Connie is compelled to leave with him and do what he demands of her. The story ends as Connie leaves her front porch and her eventual fate is left ambiguous.
It is quite surprising and ridiculous that how a girl could leave her family and ran away with a stranger. But in this fiction, Connie does so. Many people would take this fiction as a description of how Arnold Friend, who is often regarded as a possible rapist and murder, lures Connie—a representative of teenage girls away from home and family. So they are inclined to interpret this fiction as the source of exploring various reasons for the tragedy, such as the traditional depressed family atmosphere, parents’ irresponsibility and ignorance for their children and evil guys’ induction. Connie’s mother often urges her to be neat and responsible like her older sister June who saves money and helps their parents. Thus June always receives praise for her maturity, whereas Connie seldom does. Their father works a lot...