Frightened into Submission

The short story, "Where are you Going, Where have you been?" is one of great pace and detail. It is basically  a tale about an a vain fifteen year old named Connie, who gawks at herself continuously because she is pretty. As well as everyone around her notices how pretty she is. When she goes out with her friend and to a little drive in Movie theater she walks along with her a young man she met to have some food with him. On the way she makes eye contact with a "shaggy" looking boy at whom she cuts here eyes at for smiling at her like she was a piece of meet. As she walked away she couldn't help but glance back at him and noticed that he was staring back at her whilst wiggling his finger and saying "Gonna get you, baby." The next day her family leaves to go to a family barbecue which results in her being home alone, and the strange man from before pulls up in his car and starts making slow threats to Connie. He wants her to come with him and be his lover, and she will or her family will get hurt. She threatens to call the police but when she runs to the phone, he frightens her to the point that she couldn't even dial the number, She eventually walked out her house and into his arms submissively. Joyce Carol Oates did a great job at keeping a slow but steady progression  of this story in the sense that she used Connie's beauty to implicate the negative attractions people with good looks can incur, such as the stranger with the shaggy hair, later identified as Arnold Friend. Ironically, his name is friend and he's more of a predator. He found out where she lived and caught Connie when she was home alone and vulnerable. The imagery Oates uses in describing the emotion and description of this man just further exemplified the severity of the situation Connie was put in. From they way she wrote how his eyes looked at her and through her, or the bodily gestures he relayed to her, as well as Connie's protective stance away from him and slightly unsettled reaction in seeing him again, it all just further added some tension to this story. Another attribute of this story that I thought really worked would be how the dialogue between Arnold and Connie progressed. It first started off as slightly flirtatious on his side and cautious on her side to full blown frightened of him in Connie's eyes to predatory in his eyes. He wanted her, to take her, and that he did, all by frightening her with the possibility of her family being hurt. He eventually ended up getting her to be submissive and go with him. Joyce did a great job with using the dialogue between the two to represent the seriousness of this situation and I as a reader most definitely felt it.