Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Group

Topic: in where are you going, where have you been. by joyce carol oates---Do you thing that there is love of any kind in the story?

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1

chonkie01

in where are you going, where have you been. by joyce carol oates---Do you think that there is love of any kind in the story?

2

mwestwood

Yes.  Initially Connie is clearly engrossed in self-love and in self-satisfaction as she flirts with the boys at the drive-in restaurant.  Later, as Connie lies drying her hair languidly in the sun like a complacent cat, "dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love,...and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before, she is shaken out of her Hedonistic satisfaction, Arnold Friend appears.

Arnold Friend shatters Connie's world, subjecting her to psychological terrors. When Arnold threatens to harm her family if Connie does not accompany him in his car, she acquiesces.  He tells her, "...honey you're better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you."  Clearly, Connie makes an unselfish and self-sacrificing gesture for her family, a gesture motivated by love of her family.

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