home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—"Ha, ha, very funny,"—but highpitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.

This portrayal of Connie misleads us into believing that Oates’s story is an allegory about the punishment of vanity or a cautionary tale about mis-using sexuality. The placement of Connie in shopping malls and drive-in movies also acts as a red herring: we assume Oates is making a point about consumerist culture. However, I think all these readings are reductive, and I’ll explain why. Firstly, in showing Connie as vain and materialistic, Oates is merely painting a realistic portrait of a young teenager in a particular time and place. The details also prep us for Connie’s transformation, which is actually the allegorical message of the story.

Secondly, it is important to note that the story is told from Connie’s point of view, which itself is unusual in a serial-killer narrative, most of which focus on the profiling of psychopaths or the grisly fate of victims. Yet here we hear Connie's voice. Further, the potential violence occurs off-screen: Connie’s ultimate fate is only implied, and the story cuts away as Connie steps into Arnold’s reach.

Thirdly, the fact that the story is rooted in actual history is pertinent. This implies that evil exists, regardless of innocence. The story is therefore only useful as an allegory if it offers us a way to cope with irrational evil. Otherwise, Oates is merely producing a fictional account of history. However, Oates herself has stated that her story is a “realist allegory.”

We see the story’s allegorical heart emerge with Connie alone at home, and Arnold stalking her at her gate. Connie has been presented with an impossible choice. Arnold threatens her that he will harm her family if she doesn’t come out. The fact that he knows all about them and where they are magnifies the threat for Connie.

"If my father comes and sees you—"

"He ain't coming. He's at a barbecue."

"How do you know that?"

"Aunt Tillie's. Right now they're uh—they're drinking. Sitting around," he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie's back yard. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. "Yeah. Sitting around. There's your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother's helping some fat woman with the corn, they're cleaning the corn—husking the corn—"

Connie is in a daze, akin to a sort of vertigo. She understands her destiny is sealed, but perhaps there is an act of empowering grace still at hand. At the beginning of the story Connie has mostly felt contempt for her family, but now her love for them rises to the surface. We begin to see Connie in a new light, as a woman who is courageous under fire.

(Arnold Friend’s) words were not angry but only part of an incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you are a brave, sweet little girl and now they're eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting over an outdoor fire, and they don't know one thing about you and never did and honey, you're better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you."

Connie accepts Arnold’s words and steps out to save her family. In this she gains some agency in the whole of Arnold’s sadistic enterprise. The last section where she is headed to Arnold’s car is recounted in terms of a quasi-mystical experience.

"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.

Indeed, several critics have noted the religious shades to the story's allegory. The name Arnold Friend itself suggests Arch Fiend, one of the names for Satan. Connie then is an Eve-like figure Satan tempts. However, unlike Eve, Connie does not have an accompanying Adam. She is on her own, representing the predicament women victims of violence often find themselves in. Thus, Oates's story takes Eve's tale further: it is an allegory for how the self copes with dignity when faced with unspeakable evil. Scholar Elaine Showalter also refers to the story as a feminist allegory in showing how women claim agency in the reality of horror. Connie is an allegorical representation of a typical adolescent girl whom tragedy pulls into being a soldierly woman. It is not who she wanted to be, yet given her circumstances, this is where she is going.

Allegory is defined by Miriam-Webster as

the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.

Therefore, with this definition in mind, the most allegorical figure in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is Arnold Friend. He it is who symbolizes much in this narrative that has been, by Oates's own notations, dedicated to Bob Dylan, a cultural icon of teens in the 1960s.

For Connie, music is "something she could depend upon," and she spends Sundays worshipping the "music that made everything so good." This action, this ritual of Connie's worship of music, is central to Oates' theme that the lack of parental involvement with this teen-ager has sent her to look for meaning elsewhere where she is delusionally

bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself.

This "perpetual music" is what fills Connie's life and directs her thoughts and actions.  Critics Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton contend that part of the lyrics of Dylan's song, "Mr. Tambourine Man"

establishes the notion of using music to rouse one's imagination into a blissful fantasy world....

Thus, Tierce and Crafton propose, left to bathe in the sun on Sunday, Connie's "worship" of the music leads her imagination to conjure up both Arnold Friend and Ellie whose existences depend upon this music--"the music from [Connie's] radio and [Ellie's] blend together." Arnold's car and person both are the personification of Dylan's music, a music that has driven youth to various ideas and fantasies, some of which are salacious. So, when Arnold, part of her "trashy dreams," seduces/steals Connie, this action is symbolic of Connie's complete loss of innocence.  The words from another of Bob Dylan's songs, "Like a Rolling Stone," describe the final action of the story,  

Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're
invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

Certainly, then, Carol Joyce Oates' story can be interpreted as an allegory of the dangers of youth's being left to its imagination that can be seduced by influences such as music and its own unguided thoughts. 

It is clear that this story is not a typical allegory, in that every character and action stands for some kind of virtue or characteristic, as a short story like "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne can be seen to be. However, generally speaking, Oates can be seen as presenting characters who represent particular issues that effect everybody at some stage in their life. This can be seen most strongly through the character of Connie, who is presented as a perfect example of a teenager who is struggling over her identity and is unsure of who she is. Note how she is presented:

Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, that was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out...

It is clear that Oates is presenting Connie as a typical teenager who represents the way in which teenage years are characterised by a worrying uncertainty about identity. The story uses Arthur Friend as an example of an unscrupulous and frankly evil person who is able to exploit that uncertainty for his own devious purposes. Thus, although the story is not an allegory in the strict sense of the term, it is possible to argue that there are allegorical elements to it, that relate to the warning that Oates makes about teenagers and how vulnerable they can be to dangerous individuals whilst they go through this stage.

Irony is essentially when the actual meaning of something is the complete opposite of its literal meaning. Thus, there is one truly great irony in Joyce Carol Oates's story, "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?"

Connie is the main character focused on in the story. We learn early on that she is fifteen and desires to be an adult. She often has confrontations with her mother due to her adult-like behavior and beliefs. She is described as being attractive, or at least often gaining the attention of boys and men. She acts like she is indifferent to their advances, but on the inside, she enjoys their attention and the power it makes her feel. She is described as having two sides—her side at home, as a child, and her side that she shows in public, as adult-like.

With that, what Connie wants more than anything is to be an adult woman and to be treated as such. She is influenced by the music of her generation and by the attention she attains from young men. There is a certain flirtatious element to her nature which, as an adult, could lead to more intimate interpersonal relationships.

While she believes she wants this, she has no true concept of what that means in reality. When Arnold Friend comes to her house, the great irony of the story shows itself. Connie has wanted to have the attention of men and to be seen as a woman. However, when she is seen as a woman and is thrown into the adult world and the unique horror of it, she enters a hellish reality. Arnold Friend says to her:

I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will.

In this line exists the great irony of Oates's story. Connie wants to be seen as an adult and exist in the world of adult relations. However, she does not truly know what that means. She wants love and idealization by men, but she has no idea what that actually means for an adult woman. When she receives her wish, it most likely ends in her death.

There are a couple of different approaches you can take with this.  The first element is that you have to figure out with what you are comfortable in assessing this story.  Simply put, do you feel comfortable with addressing irony in Oates' work?  Are you going to take it from Connie's point of view or Arnold's point of view or from the understanding of Connie's parents. Irony is fairly broad, so you might have to narrow it down.  I think that it might be interesting to explore the title's irony in discussing the role of the parents in the story.  Another irony to be explored would be how Connie is seen as a self indulgent teen at the start of the story, but by the end of it, she becomes a vision of sacrifice for the betterment of her family even if it means her own death.  Arnold's irony with a last name of "Friend," and whose initials is "A Friend," could be explored in terms of the importance of social connections to the American adolescent.  Another irony would be that his presentation is one that indicates friendship and love, but his reality is something quite opposite.  The irony presented in evil could be explored.  Much of this is going to be based on what you feel about the story and with what you feel comfort in assessing.  This same comfort is going to be required when you compare the story with other stories.  You have to possess some level of comparative strength in discussing the themes in Oates' work with another work.  This might be in discussing the depiction of women, what it means to be a victim, or how social patterns of conformity can prove to be destructive.  As with the above ideas, your comfort here is going to be critical in developing a quality writing prompt.

In addition to the first Educator's observations, this chilling short story uses a motif and an archetype. 

A motif is a mental hitching post of sorts: it is an object or phrase that appears repeatedly within a story. One such motif in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is music. In stark contrast to her sensible sister and humdrum parents, Connie revels in fantasies ("trashy daydreams") fueled by songs. She feels invigorated by music in cars with boys, with her friends, and while daydreaming at home. This young inclination towards exuberance and vitality draws her towards more uncertain, dangerous territory. When the two men drive up to Connie's house and reveal a small radio playing the same program she had been listening to, we know that something about this experience intrigues Connie, and she will linger in it to see what sensations it may bring. Music inspires spontaneity and invokes the boldness of youth in this story—which are tragically the characteristics which cause Connie to tumble into this dark situation.

The two men in the car, Ellie and Arnold Friend, are certainly odd characters. The author hints at certain archetypesto help the reader understand their nature and purpose in the story. An archetype is a highly recognizable and referenced type of character. This story uses the archetype of the Devil. Arnold Friend is off-putting from the start, but the reader truly understands him to be evil as the story goes on. This happens not only through the plot, but little hints the author drops as to the kind of person (or even the kind of creature) Arnold Friend may be. First of all, the Devil is well-known in literature for presenting himself to humans in disguise, which would account for Arnold Friend's "shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig." Arnold being a supernatural, omnipotent creature like the Devil would also explain how he "knows everything" about Connie and where her family is on the day he comes to her house. As the situation escalates, so too do the author's hints about Arnold Friend being an archetypal devil:

She looked out to see Arnold Friend pause and then take a step toward the porch, lurching. He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of the porch posts.

Critics have theorized that in this story, as in other pieces of literature, the Devil possesses hooves instead of feet and consequently has trouble walking in human shoes. Oates chooses to cast Arnold Friend as a kind of devil, if not the Devil, to heighten the sinister nature of this interaction as well as to comment on the kind of men in real life who would hurt a young girl like Connie.  

The story "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a horrifying tale that tell fictionalizes the true tale of the Pied Piper of Tuscon. The story uses many literary devices throughout which has made it a classic short story used in many college Literature and Composition classes.

The story employs the use of foreshadowing as it shows the protagonist, Connie, attempting to be grown up. She sneaks away "ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out." This foreshadows the ending where she is forced, due to the attention of a man who saw her at the drive-in, to make a very grown up decision and save her family. Due to this plot, it is classified as a bildungsroman story. 

Another literary device that is used in duration is symbolism. The majority of the story, after Arnold Friend shows up, takes place with Connie standing in the doorway. This symbolises her being stuck between a child and an adult. In the end she chooses to walk through the doorway and into adulthood, saving her family from the violence of Arnold but at the expense of herself.