Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Loving, Superficial, Intimate Teens

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates catapults its reader into a seductive, fifteen-year-old mindset, embodied by the main character, the rebellious Connie. Connie, much like Sammy, the main character from "A & P" by John Updike, is on the prowl for companionship and sex. Their unsuccessful search for intimacy, appreciation for family life, and superficial attitudes are what bring them together as similar characters but also what makes them different and unique to the part that they play in their own stories.

In both short stories the main characters are of the opposite sex, which changes the viewpoint of both stories. Connie, at fifteen years old, is sexually active and very sexually intense. At her adolescent age she is unable to understand what is real and fake in love and intimacy. She is constantly daydreaming about sexual "trashy" situations and love, "dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was...gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs," (p. 502). Naпve and merely in love with the idea of being in love, Connie embodies a typical fifteen year old girl. Movies and songs portray perfect love and with further experience in life and love she will realize love and life does not always work out like Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You," or Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in "Sleepless in Seattle".

One would think Sammy at nineteen has a better grasp on intimacy, however, he is as rash and immature as Connie. Other aspects of his life, such as family, appear to be important, yet the sight of one beautiful girl causes him to act impulsively and lose his valuable job in order to impress her. He thoroughly appreciates her beauty, "...it was more than pretty," (p. 624) he spoke of only her shoulder blades. Smitten with this young woman, Sammy seems to fall harder and harder for her as the story progresses. The attraction he has for her is so intense he is willing to lose his job and risk disappointing his family for her comfort in the "A & P" supermarket. The way he describes her is very meticulous, each curve on her body is explained in very sensual detail, "They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms...with the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light." (p. 624). Although he is willing to put himself in the hot seat with his family for this beauty, this does not mean he does not care dearly for them and what they think of his actions.

Both Connie and Sammy's family lives are extremely important to them. This is obvious in Connie's situation through her actions. She endangers her own life to spare her family from the wrath of Arnold Friend, "'You don't want them to get hurt,' Arnold Friend went on, 'Now get up, honey. Get up all by yourself.' She stood." (p. 510). If she had refused to go, her family would have been put in danger, yet, through the story Connie appears to be very unattached from her family. There is a large amount of tension between her and her mother, "her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it," (p. 499). Connie's father is uninvolved in her life, "their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much to them..." (p. 499) and Connie shows no appreciation for her sister, "she was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother's sisters," (p. 499). She is leading a typical rebellious teenage life where she avoids parental guidance but still has a deep appreciation for them and would