The Oates

Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in New York. She has published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories and poems. In her writing they are about her characters feeling physically or mentally trapped. In her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  The situation of this story is about a teenage girl being followed back to her own house; once her mother and father leave a strange man comes to her house and gives her no choice but to leave with him. In her short story Where Is Here?  It is about a strange man coming to a families home asking to look around for old memories sake for when he lived he here as a child. He explores the backyard and inside of the house but then tension rises from the mother and father of this story because they are worried of what he is cable of doing. So they are mentally trapped and a tiny bit physically trapped. Oates uses a variety of setting in her work, nevertheless they all have something in common, which is the power to make the characters feel trapped.
      In her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?   about a teenage girl name Connie showing two side’s one for her families eyes and the other for outsider’s eyes. When she went out with her friends she left them for a boy and while being with this other boy another man keeps looking at her he tells her “Gonna get you baby”(17) Then later on this man shows up to her house with a friend. She winds up trapped by  him she has never known him till that one day she is physically trapped because though her house is big there are no other houses around her so he has her cornered. If she were to scream no one would hear her. “After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled, because it couldn’t be her father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way from the road-the driveway was long…” (18) This shows that there is no one around  her because if they lived closed to other people hearing a car...