Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Group

Question:

jayre09
jayre09
Student
High School - 11th Grade

What really happened to Connie? Did she die?

Rate question:

Posted by jayre09 on Tuesday November 6, 2007 at 5:29 PM and tagged with connie, where are you going, where have you been?.

Answers:


  1. renelane Teacher
    High School - 11th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    The ending is open to interpretation. What we do know is that she has decided to save her family and go away with Arnold. There is a sexually-threatening innuendo to the scene. She seems to go dead inside at the thought of it. Whether or not she dies, we do not know. Arnold states that he thinks she will grow to accept it, so he has no immediate plans to kill her.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/where-are/summary

    Rate answer:

    Posted by renelane on Tuesday November 6, 2007 at 5:38 PM

  2. ssellers
    ssellers Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    That is the beauty of the story. Oates never tells us, but the ominous foreshadowing given throughout the story suggests that things may have not ended well for Connie.

    Rate answer:

    Posted by ssellers on Friday November 9, 2007 at 2:00 PM


  3. linda-allen Teacher
    High School - 10th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    Yes, the reader is meant to think that Connie is murdered at the end, for two reasons. First, because Oates said she based the story on a series of murders of young girls in Arizona during the 1960s. Second, the last sentence gives us the impression that Connie is headed to her grave: "'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 and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it."

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/where-are/

    Rate answer:

    Posted by linda-allen on Tuesday February 26, 2008 at 5:37 PM

  4. calanthe
    calanthe Student
    High School - 9th Grade

    No one really knows what really happens in my English class we think that she was either killed or raped or both. Still the ending is in question. if you really want to know you can write up your own endind to it. 

    Rate answer:

    Posted by calanthe on Tuesday September 23, 2008 at 9:13 PM