Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Group

Question:

krystle29
krystle29
Student
College - Sophomore

In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, what are Arnold Friend's methods of luring Connie and what makes him successful in the end?

I must realate the symbolic implications of his characteristics to this focus

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Posted by krystle29 on Monday September 10, 2007 at 10:23 AM and tagged with arnold friend, where are you going, where have you been?.

Answers:


  1. sagetrieb Teacher
    Doctorate

    This story is also read as a "coming of age" tale, with Connie crossing the line from innocence to experience through the temptations of Arnold Friend (the name suggesting at once "fiend" and "friend," which is paradoxical yet also suggestive of the nature of her cross over into experience). Throughout the story Connie is seduced by the rock and roll music culture, and her parents do not sufficiently supervise her.  Friend, some critics think, symbolizes Connie's unconscious desires created by music, that she in fact creates him as opposed to him being an actual reality.  Oates dedicated the story to Bob Dylan.  She based the story on a song of his (It's all over now baby blue--I think that's the title...) and an actual incident she read in the newspaper about a young man seducing and then kidnapping young women. 

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    Posted by sagetrieb on Tuesday September 11, 2007 at 5:11 AM