Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story about a 15-year-old girl named Connie who ends up in a troubled situation with what we think is a way older man. The man introduces himself as Arnold Friend; he also introduces his odd friend found in the passenger seat as Eddie and states that he knows Connie and all the people whom she surrounds herself with, even going into explicit details about where her family had gone that hot summer afternoon. Arnold Friend tries to convince Connie to come out of her house and jump in his car for what he calls a “ride”, after a while of going back and forth with each other, as Connie runs to get the house phone and call the cops, something drastic happens (Which the author never seems to explain thoroughly) and ends with Connie on the floor feeling weak. At the end of the story, she is walking towards Arnold Friend, Eddie, and his dirty yellow truck. As Freud states in his second lecture, Connie had wishful impulses. These wishful impulses cause Connie to act differently than what regular 15 year olds would act like. Arnold Friend also takes advantage of Connie in her vulnerable state (as she fears him) and lures her to come out the house as he makes her believe her family would be in trouble if she did not, this is similar to when Freud uses hypnosis on his patients to help them overcome said traumas.
Throughout the story, we are approached by Connie’s snarky attitude, and within this attitude, we can see hints of her trying to act more mature than what she really is. This relates to her wishful impulse to be more grown-up. In the story it states “ Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—’Ha, ha, very funny,’—but highpitched[high-pitched] and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.” (Page 1). This quote supports the idea that Connie’s attempt to act more mature is a wishful impulse as it is identified that there are two sides to her, and when a person has two sides to them it is most likely because they think that what they want is wrong, as Freud states “Thus the incompatibility of the wish in question with the patient’s ego was the motive for the repression; the subject’s ethical and other standards were the repressing forces.”. (Freud, Second Lecture). Although the only evidence of repression is when she is at home hiding her double personality, the quote states that these wishful impulses tend to be repressed due to a person knowing that the wish is not ethical according to their standards.
In lecture II, Freud states that he will drop using hypnosis when curing his patients as he thought it was best to focus more on their normal state of mind. Freud finds that reassuring a patients knowledge on an incident helps retain missing memories, this is similar to what we see in the situation Connie is in with Arnold Friend as he is constantly reminding her how much he knows about her and her family and how she must come with him to help them. In the story, Arnold Friend states “ ‘Don’t mind him, honey, he’s just a creep. He’s a dope. Right? I’m the boy for you, and like I said, you come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bring them in this?’”. (Page 8). This quote shows how Arnold Friend manipulates young Connie by bringing in a sensitive topic like her family and threatening to hurt them. This reminds me of Freud’s hypnosis treatment as he would often speak about traumas that are important to the psychological development of the patient and he would then use these answers to help cure the person, which is what Arnold Friend is somewhat doing by talking about something that must be important to a very young girl, her family. However, he is not using this to help her, but instead to hurt her and get her to do the things that he would like.
As Connie tends to act much older than what she is, she soon learns that she does not want to be older when Arnold Friend makes her feel terribly uncomfortable by saying the things that adults would say to each other. Arnold Friend also manipulates Connie to leave with him by using her family as leverage. Both of these situations connect to Freud’s second lecture as it hits the topics of wishful impulse and a certain state of hypnosis. Although Freud’s lectures can be applied to way more than these short stories, they certainly help us analyze what exactly is happening in these realistic psychological thrillers. Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is just one of the many stories that we can analyze but it’s semi vague situations that give a lot of variation to how you view the situations within them.
