Kaitlyn Ray Mrs. Jennifer Burkett Pittman Composition II 12 February 2014 Candy Land: What Happens When Children Lack Subconscious Maps of the Real World as Seen in Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Researchers have said for years that reading is good for you. It encourages the thought process and can relays methods of working through situations one has never encountered before; that reading is the difference between a smart well-prepared child and one set in stone for failure. This resonance is similar to that of Gretchen Schulz’s and R.J.R. Rockwood’s belief asserted in “In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” that, “The society depicted in ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ has failed to make available to children like Connie maps of the unconscious such as fairy tales provide, because it has failed to recognize that in the unconscious, past and future coalesce, and that, psychologically, where the child is going is where he or she has already been” (1453). The point Schulz and Rockwood are making is that Connie’s generation and many following it, are neglecting to read fairy tales as bedtime stories and are consequently inhibiting the child’s ability to experience and work through problems he will encounter in adolescence. Whether we are aware of it or not, these stories have lessons that engrain themselves deeper than that on the superficial layer of a hero will save the day. For my short story analysis I will exemplify Oates’ fairy tale references and assert my compliance with the theory that fairy tales provide us, upon hearing them as children, with a subconscious ability to handle encounters that can be thistly and require the idea of a hero to “save the day.” Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story grimly recounting a young teenage girl’s sudden reckoning with her own sexuality in response to an attack by a predatory old fiend. It is heavily implied that Connie, the narrator, gives in to the evil Arnold Friend in the end, as she lacks the ability to handle the situation herself proven when Oates’ writes in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’, “Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it- the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it” (461). Connie had the sense to run to the telephone, but she was at a loss for who to call, or how to operate the phone because she was so consumed with fear. Her psych was ill-prepared to handle the situation that she allowed herself to get trapped in to by embracing her sexuality and beauty. According to Schulz and Rockwood, “The only ‘stories’ Connie knows are those of the sexually provocative but superficial lyrics of the popular songs she loves or of the equally insubstantial movies she attends” (1453). This implies that Connie, as mentioned early of her generation, was not raised on reading fairy tales as bedtime stories; the “stories” Connie hears are love stories from the songs and movies that tell how sweet and gentle and perfect love is. She is not prepared to see the ugly side of “love” or really lust when it rears its head in the form of Arnold Friend. Connie believed only good things about love, as her music taught her to, and though fairy tales do not extensively show the corrupt side of love in their stories, they do however show situations that require embracing fear to survive. “Little Red Riding Hood,” the classic tale of a granddaughter visiting her grandmother who has been eaten and impersonated by a wolf is a great example of this. Little Red is cautious of her grandmother’s oddities, something Connie was not when Friend approached her at her house. She casually stood in her front doorway having a conversation, a little edgy at times, but so vain in the beginning – worrying about her hair – that the idea of “Stranger Danger” did not occur to her. Friend, though compared to the Prince of “Cinderella” by Stan Kozikowski in his article “The Wishes and Dreams Our Hearts Make in Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” when he says “Arnold, overblown as he is, still plays the Prince, exercising his royal claim, having discovered his ‘barefoot’ lady fair: ‘Seen you that night and thought, that’s the one, yes sir. I never needed to look anymore’ (42)” (paragraph 17), reminds me more of the Big Bad Wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood” when Oates’ says, “His teeth were big and white” (457) and “sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up” (455). Friend’s use of make-up could also be seen as a correlation with the Wolf disguising itself as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma. Where love is sweet and innocent, it could be seen in Connie’s mind how romantic is was for Friend, like the Prince, to see her one night and mark her for her exceptional beauty, but the real world would have one to respond like Little Red Riding Hood at the signs of Friends’ peculiarities. Though Connie noticed such quirks, she lacked the “subconscious maps” necessary to relate these eccentricities to danger which would have set off an alarm in her head to not open the door in the first place and call the cops, or how to operate the phone to call the cops when she first decided Friend was off his rocker. Connie, though, is never more than half awake to reality – a commonality shared with “Sleeping Beauty” – as she is too wrapped up in the day dream gentle arms of love and her own beauty. I would go so far as to say, Oates’ story is a representation of how pampered societal children are ironically poorly reared because they have what they need. The focus of the parents is lost in the provision of material matters and therefore the emotional, psychological, and even the spiritual upbringing of the child is pushed to the back burner leading to forgotten bedtime fairy tales, a church that is a bright-lit, fly infested drive-in restaurant, and inspirational music that is mind numbing rock-and-roll singing of sweet and gentle love. I find Oates’ inclusion of similarities with fairy tales a clever way to accentuate the idea of fairy tales providing subconscious maps that Schulz and Rockwood observe as truth. I agree with this theory, as I am sure any avid reader would themselves, because I know that a lot of “life lessons” I have knowledge about are not situations that I myself have lived through, but ones that were enlightened to me through reading stories. Starting this process off young, in my mind, could only enhance the child’s ability to thrive in real life situations.

Works Cited Kozikowski, Stan. "The Wishes and Dreams Our Hearts Make in Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"." Journal of the Short Story in English. 33 (1999): n. page 89-107. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. <http://jsse.revues.org/247
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 451-462. Print.
Schulz, Gretchen, and R. J. R. Rockwood. “In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward In Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 1452-1454. Print.