English Literature Research Assignment

Historical Context example

Joyce Carol Oats was born in Lockport, New York where she grew up on a farm developing a love of literature and writing. She attended Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin and taught at the University of Detroit, the University of WIndsor in Canada and Princeton University. Although she has written many short stories and novels worthy of Pulitzer Prizes, one of her best known short stories, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” tells the story of Connie, a beautiful, self-absorbed 15-year-old who is revolting against her parents, her sister, and her boring life in middle America.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" as a classic example of a "coming of age" story, also known as an initiation story. In such stories, the protagonist undergoes an important rite of passage, transformation, an experience of transition, usually from childhood to adulthood, or from innocence to experience. The story focuses on that turning point, that trial, or the passage from one state to the other. Reading the last page of Joyce Carol Oates's story, one can't miss the coming of age happening before our very eyes. Connie splits into two persons: one (the childhood Connie) watches the other (the grown woman) depart with Arnold Friend.

Most good literature is a product of the time in which it was written, and this story is no exception. An analysis of the story shows that Oates was influenced by the serial killer Charles Schmid, the music of Bob Dylan, and the counterculture of the 1960s.

Oates first learned about Charles Schmid when she read an article in Life magazine called “The Pied Piper of Tucson ” telling the story of a young man called “Smitty” who was charged with three murders in Tucson, Arizona in 1964. Schmid is like the antagonist in the story, Arnold Friend. Both were known for their weird appearances. Like the fictitious Friend, Schmid, kept his skin darkened to a deep tan with pancake make-up (Moser 1225); he stuffs rags and tin cans into his shoes to make himself taller, and both Schmid and Arnold cruise around town in gold colored cars.

Bob Dylan’s song “Baby Blue” also inspired Oates. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Oates talks about living in Detroit while she was writing “Where are you going, where have you been.” She had purchased Dylan’s album because she liked his social protest songs. She was particularly inspired by the song “Baby Blue” because “the song’s soul and poetic rhythm were very seductive.” She continues, “ I loved the song’s surreal quality and Dylan’s couplets: “The vagabond who’s rapping at your door / Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.” Or “Strike another match, go start anew,” which suggests renewal and beginning again, only to resolve with the blunt “And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.”

Oates was intrigued by the song because she felt that it could never really be understood. We know that something is over: “The lover who just walked out your door / Has taken all his blankets from the floor / The carpet, too, is moving under you.” According to Oates, this was a “powerful evocation of losing control, of losing everything”.

Many critics see Arnold Friend as Bob Dylan but it is more likely that Friend represents the pop culture of the 60s and the type of music that seduced listeners like Connie. Oates felt Dylan’s songs were both unsettling and an attraction. She wrote of Dylan that his voice sounded "as if sandpaper could sing"; its effect was "dramatic and electrifying." Like Dylan's voice, Arnold Friend [without the r's, his name reads An old Fiend] is unsettling and devilishly electrifying and frightening both.

Friend’s car has been compared to Dylan’s song "Mr. Tambourine Man's" magic whirling ship, and Connie begins to feel dizzy as Arnold begins to sound like the man on the radio. She asks him to leave, but he refuses, laughing at her. More and more, things change, and the music on the radio underpins Connie's sense of terror. Her naiveté and the inauthenticity of the little world she has created around herself leaves her defenseless against the threats against her family and the mind control that Arnold, masked in the familiar to her, exhibits. He, thus, forces Connie out the door to drive away with him and never return.

The song was about mortality. In Oate’s story, Connie’s life was about to end. This is why she thought it appropriate to dedicate the song to Bob Dylan.

Finally, the counterculture of the 1960’s was also an influence in the story which was set in Middle America in the 1960s, a decade known as “The Age of Aquarius.” This was truly a time of revolution and reform in America and the influence the setting had on this story is very important.

First of all, the 60s were a time of change. Students were becoming revolutionaries and were rallying to fight segregation and end the war in Vietnam. A counterculture emerged that sought to change the ways that Americans worked and lived. They were against the establishment which to them represented materialism and capitalism. They were into self-knowledge and self-fulfillment. To find this nirvana, many turned to drugs, sex, communal living, and eastern religions.

The 1960s was a time when past conventions were being challenged. The Beatles brought a new wave of musicians to America. Rock music spoke openly about feminism, sexual freedom, and adolescent sexuality. Young Americans during this time period challenged conventional lifestyles and customs. The youth challenged age old traditions of sex and marriage. The justified using illegal drugs to “find themselves.” The new lifestyles that the counterculture embraced were considered immoral by the older generation.

Perhaps central to the counterculture of the 1960s was rock music. Rock and roll was born in the 1950s and exploded in the 1960s. Much of the music of this era was written as a form of protest. Bob Dylan is perhaps the best known artist to use his music as an indictment of society. “Blowin in the Wind” and “Masters of War” were popular in the early 1960s as protest songs.

The setting for this story is a typical suburban town with typical sights such as a shopping plaza and a drive in. Connie lives in a three year old “Asbestos ranch house” on the outskirts of town. Oates purposely avoids pinpointing a specific location so the story’s themes are universal.

Some critics interpret "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" as a classic example of a "coming of age" story, also known as an initiation story. In such stories, the protagonist undergoes an important rite of passage, transformation, an experience of transition, usually from childhood to adulthood, or from innocence to experience. The story focuses on that turning point, that trial, or the passage from one state to the other. Reading the last page of Joyce Carol Oates's story, one can't miss the coming of age happening before our very eyes. Connie splits into two persons: one (the childhood Connie) watches the other (the grown woman) depart with Arnold Friend.

The protagonist in this story, Connie, is a reflection of the 1960s sexualized culture. Like many young people of that time, Connie is self-absorbed and prizes beauty over everything else. The only connection she has with the world is through music, which becomes an important part of her life. Connie, like many girls in the 60s defines herself by her relationship with the opposite sex. She is obsessed with romance and uses her girlfriends as a way to approach boys. Connie thinks she is an adult and exploits her sexuality; however, she is still a child in many ways. For example, when she is faced with harm, she cries for her mother.

Connie is a product of the culture that she lives in. She is self-absorbed like most teenagers of that time. Connies obsession with her hair and her beauty is also a product of the time and place where she exists. The 60s was a time when traditional forms of morality were scorned. Connie is living in a place where there is no higher authority. Her parents should have been a source of guidance and limits. However, they don’t keep tabs on her or put any controls on her actions. Her father does not even acknowledge that he has a daughter, and her mother is consumed with criticizing Connie. Because of this lack of authority, Connie can live two lives. When she is home, she is a typical sullen teen, but when she is with her friends, she is upbeat and flirty. She experiments with her new-found sexuality and is looking forward to becoming an independent woman.

The 1960s was a time to question all authority, and Connie does just that. She does not attend church, and to her music is religion. The drive in where she listens to songs is a like a church to Connie. When she is home listening to music, Connie has a religious experience that Oates describes when she lies “bathed in a slow-pulsed joy that seem to rise mysteriously out of the music itself” (3).

Arnold Friend is the antagonist in this story. He is an odd character who is much older than he appears. Connie meets him at the drive-in parking lot which is filled with music. Connie automatically trusts Arnold when she learns that they like the same radio station.

Music influences Connie’s ideas about love and sex, popular subjects for songs of the 60s. Connie wants romance not sex, but she lives in a sexist world where women are viewed as objects for males to enjoy.

To Oates, Connie was both the prototypical American teenager of her day and the embodiment of the old myths of females being vulnerable to the illusive blend of death and eroticism. The story captures the longing of the teenage heart for someone who promises the moon. It also touches on the limited options of adolescent girls, invasive victimization, and the American obsession with violence. Oates herself described the tale as "Hawthornean, romantic, shading into parable."