102-3. Where are we going, where have we been?

As you can see from the image I have chosen for this post, I am desperate for spring, to see my favourite colour, that deep velvety green, to feel the possibilities of a new paradigm and to renew my hope in what is to come.

But this tender leaf also symbolises the tender period of adolescence. Connie, in Oates' masterful short story "Where are you going, where have you been?" is just at that awkward age of early womanhood when the body seems to have more influence over the person than the mind, when unfulfilled longings crowd the eventuality of a broader vision of self.

Let's look at that enigmatic last line of the story once more:

"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said, in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before ad did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.

That land, that uncharted territory of lived experience, of sexual knowledge, of the vast question mark, of the world outside the narrow confines of Connie's sheltered suburban existence. We must all make that journey, make that terrifying leap across the chasm from the known to the unknown. Coming of age is only one such trip.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Arnold Friend's visit is conjured out of Connie's music-induced daydream; he comes up the drive at the very point at which she is drowsy from listening to the radio, their conversation mingles at various points with the sounds of rock and the voices of DJs. If we drop the two R's (Rock and Roll) from Arnold's name and come up with his concealed identity, An Old Fiend, if we consider the oddity of Arnold's appearance, behaviour and use of language as well as his inability to cross the threshold of Connie's house uninvited (a historical limitation of the devil), if we accept that Arnold Friend is indeed an incarnation of Satan, then what is Oates actually trying to say? And why would Connie create such a terrifying vision out of her subconscious? Connie is living on the knife edge of ambiguity; she wants to mature sexually, is thrilled by the thought of romance and desire, yet at the same time she recognises the inherent danger to her female self: the threat, the implicit violence, the ever-present possibility of rape. Note that the sexual politics in this story are very different to those in The graduate. But critics have also suggested that Oates is severely critiquing the values of modern society in this story; given that, how would you ultimately interpret the ending?

Hazal has written brilliantly about the numbers 33 19 17 on the side of Arnold's car, and Ezgi O. has linked the story to our ENG 101 documentary, Tough guise. I very much recommend reading their posts.

'Spring Dreams' by ViaMoi, licenced under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial NoDerivative Works 2.0.