The driver introduces her to his friend, Ellie Oscar and invites her for a ride. Connie decides to chat with the strange driver. She recognizes the driver to be the same unpleasant guy. She sees the same gold-colored convertible that she had seen the night before. Soon after, a car pulls up into the driveway and honks. Connie’s family goes for a barbecue at an aunt’s house, leaving Connie home alone. Later, Connie and her friend return to the mall to be picked up by her friend’s father. He later drops Connie back to the drive-in restaurant, where they had met. Ignoring him, Connie and Ernie spend hours together visiting different restaurants, and then at an alley. The guy gestures something with his finger and says, “ Gonna get you baby“. On their way to the car, Connie sees a creepy guy with a gold-colored convertible staring at her. Connie soon leaves her friend sitting at the drive-in and goes out with Ernie to his car. They escape from the mall and go across the highway to a drive-in restaurant. One night, as usual, Connie and her best friend are dropped off at a mall by the friend’s father. She is highly influenced by the popular music and lives of the rich and famous, and often daydreams of love and romance as shown in the movies and mentioned in songs. She spends most of pastime by picking up boys at a drive-in restaurant, hanging out with her best friend, and listening to music. She is often arguing with her sister and mother and disregarding her family commitments. SummaryĬonnie, like many other teenagers, is going through her adolescent, rebellion phase, trying to appear wiser than she really is. It leaves the fate of Connie unknown, with only a statement, “ vast sunlit reaches of the land“, keeping the readers begging to know the fate of poor, naive Connie. Unlike many stories of that time, this one has an open-ended ending. The author introduces the readers to a teenage girl (Connie) going along her merry way, but sadly attracting the attention of a shady man who enters her life, threatening to change it for good. These winds of change laced the air with topics, viz., adolescent sexuality, feminism, and sexual freedom, which were the issues of that time. Teenagers were highly mesmerized by popular rock bands and movies. It was the time when the air was heavily influenced by the changes brought about by the civil rights movement, and on the brink of the hippie culture. The story is set in the 1960s’ America, post-World War II. This character baffled her to such an extent that she used Schmid as the basis for her short story. Yet, she found him dangerous as the strange character managed to charm three women and kill them. She was pretty taken in by this character who was described to have stuffed boots and a clumsy gait. The story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, penned down by Joyce Carol Oates, is based on the tale of Charles Schmid, a killer who was written about in the 1966 Life Magazine issue. The story to is dedicated to Bob Dylan’s song, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. ‘Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?’ is Oates’ most critically discussed work, which became an instant classic in 1966.
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