Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is an allegorical horror story specifically aimed at sexually liberated females. Revealing her influence in Flannery O’Connor, Oates creates a monster--Arnold Friend–similar to “his father,” the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Both creatures hold a surreal aura that preys upon the powerful energy of the feminine id. When the fragrance of the feminine id breezes past the nose of a demonic predator, it comes to conquer the sexually liberated female via sex or death. Or, as “Flannery O’Connor . . . calls the grotesque character ‘[wo]man forced to meet the extremes of [her or] his own nature’” (Holman 228).
Both stories deal with forces evoked from the subconscious. Oates’ story is about a teenage girl, Connie, realizing her own sexuality. She is forced to confront the sex demon battling to conquer her will. This sex demon–Arnold Friend-- is Connie’s developing id, which in Freudian theory, is the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious; id serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs, such as fighting, feeding, fearing or f***ing. An interesting intuition beckons the possibility that Oates named her main character Connie in order to serve as an allusion to Flannery O’Connor, or as a venerable nickname for an author much read, Flannery O’Connie. Nevertheless, there is a mathematical relation between the two stories, as well as the authors’ methods.
Generally speaking, in the Gothic allegory, the id manifests itself in familiar forms in order to deceive. For instance, the word id derives from the Latin, meaning “it,” which in Stephen King’s novel IT, id reveals itself as a wicked clown who preys upon young children. Most often id is some kind of evil archon in disguise, such as the devil. In O’Connor’s story, which is psychologically more complex than King’s, id is the Misfit, or the son of a devil, who returns to claim a debt owed to Him. In Oates’ story, id is Arnold Friend, who is also the devil, but seemingly the father of the other. In other words, because of Oates’ veneration and study of O’Connie, she may have borrowed the model of the Misfit to serve as the product of Connie’s black magick sexual agreement with Arnold Friend.
In O’Connie’s story, an epiphany occurs in time. Within the aggregate of the grandmother’s past and present, therein lay the Misfit--the grotesque product of Granny’s id. He seems to be in the form of her son, who is the illegitimate product of a sex-magick-pact she made with the Devil, years ago when she was young and promiscuous. Perhaps the Devil was Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden? Nevertheless, the id or the demon returns, after His temporary release from the fiery prison called Hell, and claims the soul that is indebted to the cosmic forces of evil; he instills death, a function of the libido, by killing the source of his own condemnation, his mother, who long ago gave herself to the paternal demon, Arnold Friend.
In Oates’ allegorical gothic tale, the id also manifests itself as libido. The libido is the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives. In the case of Connie, it is her increasing sexual desire or the manifestation of her sexual drive. Libido also comes from the Latin, meaning “desire.” Arnold Friend is purely motivated by this same extremity within Connie. If a reader remains within the aggregate of O’Connor’s story, and returns to an imaginary time when the grandmother was young, one will realize how the black-magick-sex-pact with the devil initially occurred. Imagine, Connie to be the grandmother many years before she encounters the Misfit. Of course, as Oates states, “the Gothic work’s metaphysics are Plato’s, and not Aristotle’s. There is a profound difference between what appears to be, and what is, and if you believe otherwise, the Gothicist has a surprise for you” (Oates 7). In other words, do not think of contradictions when reading these two tales back-to-back.
Sure, there may be problems with this interpretation of Oates’ and O’Connor’s stories, but they are merely logical, literal problems. A romantic critique, which necessarily believes in the “expressive theory of criticism” states that “the object of the artist is the expression of the artist’s emotions, impressions, or beliefs; it is an essential doctrine of the Romantic critic” (Holman 196). Therefore, with this in mind, and a sprinkle of imagination, one may be blessed with an epiphany that it seems highly likely that Oates, who read a lot of O’Connor, saw O’Connor as an extension of the grandmother character. And in so doing, Oates created a different dimension to this character in Connie. It may seem logically impossible, but “Gothic fiction is the freedom of the imagination, and the triumph of the unconscious” (Oates 8), so the Romantic voice in this essay may rest assured in his more extensive freedom of interpretation. Or as Oates writes, “Gothic work fascinates me because it is so powerful a vehicle of truth-telling, there is no wilder region for the exercise of Pure Imagination. The surreal is as integral a part of our lives as the ‘real,’ since the unconscious underlies consciousness, and we are continuously bombarded by images, moods and memories from that uncharitable terrain, it is in fact more primary than the ‘real.’ There is a profound difference between what appears to be, and what is” (Oates 7).

Works Cited
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Joyce Carol Oates. “The Madness of Art: The Horror Writer and Society.” Writing Horror. Ed. Mort Castle. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books,1997.

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