The short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was published in nineteen ninety-three. The author Joyce Oates dialogues a young girl named Connie and her uncomfortable encounter with a man named Arnold Friend. Many critics believe that the short story had almost a dreamlike impression. In the story, Oates incorporates several binaries and repetitions to underscore the theme of reality versus fantasy. First and foremost, Oates begins the story with an internal/external binary. Oates describes the protagonist, Connie, as a young fifteen-year-old girl who spends most of her time thinking about her appearance Oats writes, “habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was …show more content…
The author described Connie’s house in a “dream like” visual. The author demonstrates how Connie was with her eyes closed, dreaming of a man that was “gentle, the way it was promised in song” and how when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the black yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still” this visual description that Oates provided emphasized that the world she is in is a “dream-like” presence, inferring the reader that Connie is dreaming. When Connie meets Arnold Friend whom Oates describes as a man who speaks and dresses in the same manner that Connie treasures, she is indecisive and alarmed to go on a ride with him, however, even though she seemed afraid at first, Arnold had all the character traits that Connie was attracted to. For example, Oates exemplifies how Connie observed Arnolds “lifting” voice almost as I if he were “reciting the words to a song.” This conveys the claim that music connects with Arnold's characteristics. The fact the Arnold knew so much detail about Connie and about where her family was can only be explained by the fact that he was a made up character invented by Connie’s