Life changes at a quick pace, changes can happen in a blink of an eye. Some of changes are small, like making new friends. Other times these changes aremajor, like the transition between being a child, and becoming an adult. In Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the author dramatizes the decisive moment people face when at the crossroads between the illusions and innocence of youth and the uncertain future. Joyce Carol Oates' message of life and transitions is best understood when the reader brings his or her interpretation to meet with the author's intention at a middle ground. In this story of life passages and crucial events, it is imperative that the reader has a solid response to Oates' efforts in order to fully comprehend the message. The author begins her message with the title of her work, which conveys the idea of passages of time in life. The phrase where are you going asks of the future, and the phrase where have you been wonders of the past. The reader is let into Connies thoughts making her the focal point of the story. The reader is let into a world that we can all be familiar with. Connie an attractive fifteen year old girl, the typical teenager. A world full of music, friends, fun. She spends the summer going to town, hanging with friends, listening to music, and meeting with boys. She and her friends sharesimilar interests in boys and fun, and would lean together and whisper andlaugh secretly (Oates 703) when they gathered together. Like many teens, Connieseemingly lives two lives: one that her family sees, another that she projectsto her peers. Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and onefor anywhere that was not home (Oates 703). She seems to at constant odds withher family, not seeming to have any emotional connection to them observable tothe reader. She lies to her mother and sister about her friends and where shegoes at night. Her relationship with her father is non-existent, as he is alwaysat work. She considers her family to be an embarrassment when around herfriends. June works at Connie's school and if that weren't bad enough - withher in the same building (Oates 702), Connie also saw her sister asunattractive. Physical appearances are important to Connie, and she isfittingly obsessed with her own. Connie also lives in a fantasy world. Shespends her time daydreaming about boys and meetings with them. Her motherconstantly tries to pull her out of these imaginary journeys, telling her hermind was all filled with trashy daydreams (Oates 702). Her image of the worldis what she sees behind rose colored glasses of youth. Her involvement withboys, both real and imagined, was sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies andpromised in songs (Oates 705). Their faces blended together in her mind,dissolved into a single face that was not really a face (Oates 704), makingthem not real people capable of anything but figments she could control,figments that prolonged her fantasies. She never thought about the world beyondher doorstep until the day it came for her. The day Arnold Friend pulls upConnie's driveway is the day Connie's world of youthfulness is invaded withbrutal reality. Before Friend actually shows up, Connie has an experience whereshe awoke from a dream and hardly knew where she was (Oates 705), finding herranch house looking more old and worn and asbestos- covered than she everrealized before. This is just the beginning of the reality Connie faces thatday. Friend comes to Connie's house, attempting to seduce her into going for aride with him in his beat up gold painted jalopy. The location they areactually headed for is ambiguous, both to the readers and to the charactersthemselves. Friend himself seems to have no idea where he is going to takeConnie, only that it will be away from her house. It was if the idea of going .. . . Somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him (Oates 707). The fact thatthere is no destination in mind is evidence that the future Connie faces, onceremoved from her cocoon of youth, is itself uncertain. Friend eventuallysucceeds in luring Connie away from the comfort and protection of her home; thethreat of violence to her family by Friend is the catalyst for her relenting.This is proof of Connie's changing values, for the reader recognizes that thisis the first time Connie has shown any emotional connection to her family. The fact that Friend approaches Connie's house is crucial tounderstanding what Connie is experiencing. A house has connotations to thereader as a sanctuary, a place where a person (in this case Connie) can be achild protected from the world. Connie's retreating into the house at Friend'sapproach and her refusal to fully leave the grounds reveals her desperate attemptsto cling to the safe world she knows. She recognizes things are differentoutside where Friend inhabits, yet her own house is not the familiar, protectedstructure she grew up depending on. In fact, Connie is trapped somewherebetween her childhood home which no longer provides any protection orfamiliarity for her and a dangerous future with an adult stranger. Connie loses her innocents the moment she decides to leave with Friend. Her leaving the house is showing us her stepping away from her innocents that she can never return too. He brings to a crashing halt all her song-inspired fantasies ofyoung love. Friend's face is specifically mentioned several times, and he evensported a round grinning face (Oates 706) on the side of his car. This is asharp contrast to the faceless boys of Connie's dreams. It is clear that dreamsand realities are beginning to melt together for Connie. He is hardly thetypical romantic hero the readers and Connie are accustomed to (regardless ofwhether or not he thinks he is), both in physical appearance and in mentalwell-being. He is so old he wears make up to appear younger. He is short,walking just on the verge of falling over. His attempts to connect with youthare outdated, from the passé slogan on his car to the way he verbally ranthrough all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which one ofthem was still in style (Oates 712). He is often confusing to Connie, revealingto her an imaginary x symbol he proclaims to be his mark as well as a series ofnumbers that have no significance to her though he evidently feels they should.He read off the numbers, 33, 19, 17, and raised his eyebrows at her to see whatshe thought of that, but she didn't think much of it (Oates 706). Thisreference that Friend makes is from the bible. The numbers and the symbol arejust as meaningless to the reader’s eye because we are supposed to feel thedisorientation Connie (our protagonist) feels at the invasion of Friend.Despite his charming manner, Friend is boldly blunt, especially when talking toConnie about sex. He uses explicit phrases that turn Connie's fanciful ideasabout experiencing sweet love into a frightening sexual act. He tells her 'I'llcome inside you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll loveme' (Oates 710). Connie, feeling increasingly threatened retreats further intothe safety of her home. By the time Connie finally steps outside the door ofher house, she has completely disassociated herself from her person as well aseverything she had come to know and trust. She leaves a part of herself in thehouse as she watched herself . . . as if she were safe back somewhere . . .watching this body and this head (Oates 713). Even her heart was nothing thatwas hers, that belonged to her (Oates 713). When she finally crosses over intohis arms, she is no longer the same Connie she was at the beginning of thisstory, her illusions gone and only the unforeseeable future ahead of her.Connie is the main character of the story. The story is about her, not the morecolorful, but less prominent Friend. Friend may be the most fascinating charactersuperficially because his quirks jump out at the reader, but it is too quick ajudgment to say the tale is his. A possible interpretation of the character ofFriend requires a deep examination that reveals a stronger explanation: that heis duplicated from sheer realism. The knowledge he displays, which may at firstappear extraordinary, is nothing more than guesswork and a little spying. Whathe knows of her family's picnic could easily be explained when we understandthat Arnold has been watching Connie, which he in fact picked her and wasstalking her. Connie, in her fear and confusion, believes him to be telling thetruth, when he is likely just making things up and piecing things together withsimple psychological insight. Friend's appearance and personality are furtherproof he is not Satan. It is probably safe to assume the Prince of Darknesswould not feel personally emotionally wounded or pride by a human's skepticism.His appearance is downright unattractive, and the powerful Satan, if he wastruly attempting to seduce a girl, would probably choose to make him attractiveto her. To claim Arnold as the devil incarnate and the story are about him isto quickly make a decision without taking time to closely examine the facts.But reducing the story to a tale of mere sexuality is an oversimplificationthat denies the true power of the piece. Analysts contend that the numbers onFriend's car add up to 69 (Winslow 239), and his verbal threat to her isexplicitly sexual (Winslow 239) in nature. Yet these numbers could meananything; they could be the age of himself and his victims, they could be asecret code only he knows. The numbers are not definitively sexual. Friend'sthreat to Connie is, on the very basic surface, sexual. But his imposition on hergoes far deeper than that. The story is not about Connie's innocence only interms of sexual matters, although that is a part of it. It is about Connie'syouthful incompetence of all things in life. “Where Are You Going, Where HaveYou Been?” deals with Connie's interaction with life in all its facets.Consequently, Friend's invasion of Connie's world is not a purely sexual one,although it does simplify the story to say so. Friend invades her home propertyand threatens her family and illusion of love and life. Friend tears apartevery foundation that Connie has come to consider as truth, and sex is just apiece of that. The argument of the author herself has a fallacy that forces thereader to question the validity of her contention. Oates uses Connie to tell ofthe innocence and fantasies of youth and how they end in such a brief instant.This is the use of a well-known cliché that is not always true in all cases.Not all youths have naive fantasies and false illusions about the world. Forexample, many children in rough cities learn at a very young age that lifecannot afford you daydreams, and that the world is a tough, unsafe place. Also,not all people experience a defining moment when their past is behind them andthe future is ahead. For some people, the transition between youth and futureis a gradual process, moving so slowly that one particular minute cannot beappropriately designated as more crucial than the others. This fallacy, whilenot completely rendering her message invalid, nonetheless constrains thecredibility of her assertion. Using a true case of violent crime, Joyce CarolOates examines how youthful naivete and fantasy end in a crucial moment justbefore the uncertain future begins in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.For Connie, that moment came the day Arnold Friend violated her world. A closerinspection of our own lives would perhaps show us the moment where ourselvesstood between the illusions of our youth and the indefinite future