Growing up is a difficult task everyone must go through. When we are kids most of us want to skip that stage and become adults so that we can experience grown up things. Many kids, especially young girls, try their hardest to seem much older and act in such ways that their innocence is lost. Often seen wearing skimpy outfits, teenagers convey a point to make men put their eyes upon them. In the short story “Where are you going, Where have you been?” Oates uses religious symbolism to show the end of innocence. “Where are you going, Where have you been?” opens with the physical description of fifteen-year old Connie. She is very beautiful and often checks herself in the mirror to reassure her beauty. Her mother disapproves of this habit and often scolds her about it. This habit of hers indicates that she is insecure and depends solely on her beauty for people …show more content…
According to Harold Hurley, “The sum of the numbers—sixty-nine— is interpreted as yet another indication of Arnold’s sexual deviancy” (Hurley 63). The passage containing Arnold’s secret numbers reads, “‘Now these numbers are a secret code, honey,’ Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17, and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn’t think much of it” (Oates). Hurley also argues “the secret code derives from the nineteenth chapters of Judges and Genesis.” Judges 19:17 reads “When he looked and saw the traveler in the city square, the old man asked, ‘Where are you going? Where did you come from?’” According to Hurley this provides both “the title for Oates story and the following analog to its plot, ‘Judges 19 concerns a man of the tribe of Levi who searches out and returns home with his concubine. Similarly, Connie has been the concubine of the devil (Arnold) in Oates story, and he searches for her to embark on a journey’” (Hurley