Where_Are_You_Going_Where_Have_You_Been__By_Joyce_Carol_Oate

Where Are You Going Where Have You Been' By Joyce Carol Oates “It's A Dream“ He’s Her Dream Boy Have you ever woken up from a nightmare and questioned yourself if it really happened or not' Well in Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been'” a little fifteen-year-old girl, who is self indulged, leads a promiscuous kind of life and the readers don’t know if it’s a dream or if it’s something else. Many people might argue that everything is real and nothings a dream, or that Arnold Friend is the devil, or even that it’s based on Bob Dylan’s song “Mr. Tambourine Man.” My analysis of this story is that it is simply a dream and nothing else. There are some critics who give evidence that it is a dream and one in particular is Larry Rubin. Giving proof from the story and Larry Rubin’s critical essay there are points that make me think Connie’s encounter with Arnold Friend is a without a doubt a dream. This girl is always having trashy daydreams about the boys she has met, “but all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with urgent insistent pounding of dream, arnold, about, connie, real, music, it’s, friend, story, really, one, little, something, face, car, air, 705, rubin, man, larry, know, half, even, don’t, boys, arnold’s, 709, year, way, strange, saying, rise, points, out, oates