Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” presents the passage of its protagonist, Connie, a fifteen-year old girl, fro childhood to womanhood. At the same time, a story of innocence destroyed by evil emerges. The passage that Connie goes through is made possible through the introduction of Arnold Friend into her life. While Connie’s character is thoroughly discussed, little information is given about Arnold Friend. One question that comes to mind after reading the story and several critical essays about it is: Is Arnold Friend real, or just created by Connie’s mind?
Critics Gretchen Schulz and R.J.R. Rockwood state that Arnold is “created in the mind of Connie . . . exist[ing] there only (520). They further suggest that Connie created Arnold in order to have an opportunity to pass into womanhood. Schulz and Rockwood also note “that Connie, like all young people, needs help as she begins to move from the past to the future, as she begins the perilous inward journey towards maturity” (152). It is easy to see Arnold of good character if he is viewed this way. If Connie created him, there is no real threat to her life. He is there solely to help her pass to another stage of development in her life.
Arnold’s physical appearance is favored by Connie, which may suggest that she has created him. She seems to be very observant of others’ looks as well as her own. Finding someone who passes her own strict judgment seems more than merely coincidental. She also approves of his taste in music and clothes. In fact, Arnold seems to be everything to which Connie would be attracted. Also, Arnold knows where her family went on the day he came to visit her and what her sister was wearing. The fact that Arnold seems to know a great deal of detail about Connie and her family suggests that he was created in Connie’s mind.
Throughout Connie’s conversation with Arnold, she keeps getting a sense that she is looking at her surroundings for the first time. For example, Connie backs away from Arnold into her house were “[t]he kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before” (512). These perceptions are showing that she is passing into the next stage of development of her life, womanhood, which is so different from her present stage that she does not recognize it. Everything that was familiar to her seems new. This passage is near completion when she gives in to Arnold at the end of the story. She steps out of her house, symbolizing her childhood, into the “land that [she] had never seen before and did not recognize” (516), symbolizing womanhood.
However, it seems unlikely that Connie would create a character so threatening. In her daydreams, she thinks of the boy she had been with the night before, “how nice he had been, how sweet it always was” (507). Arnold, on the surface, appears to be everything Connie would be attracted to, but inside, he is everything she would be repelled by. He is not the ideal boy that she daydreams about. He is too forward, not like the boys Connie is used to, and seems to be trying to hide every aspect of his real self.
Arnold tells Connie that he is her lover, which is obviously something to which Connie is opposed. He also threatens that if she tries to wait until her family comes home, “then they’re all going to get it” (514). Just after that, he tells her “. . . give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels” (514). He tells her “nobody else” will get hurt, implying that he intends to hurt Connie.
Why would Connie’s mind create a character to help her that also wants to rape her and murder her family? It is very unlikely that her mind created this horrific character. If Connie’s mind were to create a character to bring her into womanhood, it is more probable that the person would be like the boys in her daydreams. Considering that she is still in the stage of childhood, she would be unable to create such a complex character. Because of this whole incident, Connie is brought into womanhood, though it is unlikely that her mind created the situation in order to do so.
Another question to be answered, if it can be assumed that Arnold Friend is a real character, and not someone created by Connie’s mind, is: Is Arnold Friend helpful or harmful to Connie?
In “Connie’s Tambourine Man: A New Reading of Arnold Friend,” Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton state that, “[w]e should not assume that Arnold is completely evil because [Connie] is afraid of him” and suggest further that “his arrival could be that of a savior” (532). Obviously, Arnold cannot be considered a savior because of his threats of rape and murder. In fact, Joyce Carol Oates created his character based on a serial killer. How can he be considered a savior? Arnold does consequently provide the escape Connie needs to enter womanhood, but it does not seem likely that his intention was to help her.
Arnold’s evil and cruel intentions destroy the innocent world that Connie had lived in, which happens symbolically when she succumbs to Arnold and leaves the safety and innocence of her world. She then enters a world that is unfamiliar to her, which symbolizes womanhood, but also the evil, corrupted world of Arnold Friend.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” reprinted in Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1991.
Schulz, Gretchen and R. J. R. Rockwood. “In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been’ ” reprinted in Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1991.
Tierce, Mike and John Michael Crafton. “Connie’s Tambourine Man: A New Reading of Arnold Friend.” Reprinted in Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1991.
