In his article “Joyce Carol Oates’s Where are you going, Where have you been as pure realism”, Coulthard argues that Oates’s story is strictly, a written representation of a victim of the real-life murderer, Charles Schmid. He claims that the characters are not “personifications of abstract qualities but a demented killer and giddy teenage girl. Arnold Friend does not appear in a dream but at Connie’s kitchen door” (506).

Furthermore, while defending the story’s realistic nature, Coulthard fails to examine the protagonist herself. In the story, Connie is portrayed as a stereotypical, self-centered teenager. Yet, Coulthard fails to realize that in such a portrayal, Connie is left in a vulnerable state. Oates describes her as having a mind “filled with trashy daydreams” (149). It is in this state that she is unconsciously swept away into the expectations of the adult world and is thus, a victim of her own personality. Essentially, the comparison between Alleen Rowe and Oates’s Connie only proves that a vague sketch was made from the story of Charles Schmid and from that, the fictitious story of Connie and that of her seducer, Arnold Friend.

In her article “O’Conner’s Mrs. May and Oates’s Connie: an unlikely pair of religious initiates”, Nancy Bishop Dessommes insists that, “Arnold appears as a representation of all Connie’s desires and fears” (Dessommes 437). While Coulthard dismisses this as speculation, she overlooks one small detail. At the drive-in, when Connie first meets Arnold Friend, it appears that “only Connie—not even the group she is walking with—notices the by who speaks only to her” (Dessommes 437). It is at this point, early on in the story, in which Oates’s alludes to the fact that Arnold Friend may have not existed at all, but instead he is a vision. In addition, Dessommes points out that, despite the vivid description of Arnold’s gold jalopy much later in the story, “Oates makes no mention of the dented bumper, strange slogans, or cartoonish pictures that Connie notices right away when the car is parked in her driveway” (Dessommes 437). Connie sees the Arnold’s gold jalopy on two different occasions, yet she fails to recognize the strange insignia a

Some topics in this essay:
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