Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?

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Where are You Going, Where have you been?
"Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a famous short story by Mrs. Joyce Carol Oates. The story focuses on a girl of fifteen years who is growing too fast, violating society's social and moral norms. As the story progresses, her deviant behaviors and conflicting nature as a liberation-seeker lead to her horrible fate as Arnold visit her at home. The essay elaborates on how Connie's behavior causes her ultimate destruction brought by the visit of Arnold when her family had gone to a barbecue party.
The story was published in 1966 for the first time, which indicates that the story was written during the age of moral and cultural corruption in America in 1960, and, therefore, the author attempts to elaborate on the destructive consequences of socially incompatible reforms of that age through the character of Connie. Connie's protagonist is a product of social reforms like sexual freedom due to the civil rights movement. She needs attention from the opposite gender through her beauty and doups. With her "long, dark, blonde hair" and "pull-over jersey blouse" (Oats 1), she experiments tricks to attract boys as the girls began after the end of the civil rights movement (Oats 1). In her endeavor to magnetize men, she unintentionally invites Arnold's attention, who becomes the source of her destruction.
Connie's behavior is connected to the visit of Arnold in another way. She develops a deviant behavior toward her family and society. It is transparent from her mother's constant scolding to her for focusing on her beauty all the time and giving her examples of her elder sister, who conforms to the social norms. However, Connie was not interested in the household like her mother and saving money like her sister. She was keenly obsessed with her beautiful appearance, personality, and rock music, and life pleasures in a newly free society. It seems as though her over-obsession with her beauty, combined with his deviant behavior, led to her destruction. The deviant behavior, in typical literary situations, results in murder, suicide, or other self-destructiveness. Hen...