Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Oates Essay -- Literary An

For centuries, society has placed a remarkably adult emphasis on protecting the young from the m either perceived errors of ripening up. Effective sex education is resisted in many locations across the nation in favor of somewhat comical biblical suggestions for abstinence until unification even while the majority of those targeted teens ar viewing the world as a much and more sexual place. So many views are weaving in and out of teenagers newly formed adolescent minds that any effective argument for responsible attitudes or depth psychology of sexual doings in teens should be expressed with a certain minimal form of clarity. Unfortunately, this essential lucidity of advice is missing in the short spirit level Where are You Going, Where Have You Been, in which the misguided Joyce Carol Oates creates the character of Arthur Friend as a clich personification of the inner demon of uncontrollably budding sexuality. Instead, the swarthy characterization of the antagonist drink s nothing more than a confused and enigmatic view of the meaning of the story.According to popular belief, the character in question, Arthur Friend, is basically the devil, or if not the fiend himself, a reason adequate symbolic fax that serves to represent a similarly sinister feeling of society. Theres such a plethora of textual evidence to support this analysis that its often skipped over in discussions in favor of more thought provoking conversation. However, the demonic illustration of A. Friend is so present in the story that to skip it would be to unforgivably neglect an inbuilt part of the story. In nearly every detail of description resides a sometimes insidious demonic allusion. The physical appearance being the virtually present, it describes Arthur as a man beh... ...ert explanation of the character, the audience would be able to see that Arnold meant exactly what she intended him to mean, and then could move onto the next aspect of the story. This would have clea red up the audience disconnect that currently re of import present in her painfully dense story. Her choice to veil her main antagonist with so much symbolism hindered the readers dexterity to understand her story, thereby hurting any intended effect the story was to have.Works Cited Nmachiavelli, et al. Question What do the numbers 33, 19, 17 signify in the story? They are written along the side of Arnold Friends car. Enotes.com. Enotes.com, Inc., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. .Oates, Joyce Carol. Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? N.p. Epoch, 1966. N. pag. Print.