Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Themes

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” opens with a physical description of its fifteen-year-old protagonist, Connie—a pretty blonde girl living in 1960s America whose life revolves around bickering with her family, hanging out with her friends, and drooling over boys. Right away, Oates makes clear that Connie is highly conscious of her looks; she has a “habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make…

The teenage Connie frequently bristles against her mother, who attempts to control her daughter’s behavior and encourage her to be more like her responsible older sister, June. Yet where Connie seems somewhat at the mercy of her family at home, she holds an effortless kind of control over the boys she has sexual encounters with, and she takes pleasure in the simple sense of power this gives her. Oates introduces a subtler kind…

Throughout the story popular culture—particularly music—is presented as a medium through which adolescents make sense of their inner emotional lives. As a fifteen-year-old girl who struggles to get along with her family and enjoys nothing more than spending time with her friends and flirting with boys at the plaza, Connie is highly attuned to music and the affect it has on her. Connie herself is described in musical terms: she wears “jingling” charms on…

Over the course of the story, fifteen-year-old Connie is eager to appear like a mature young woman, and she believes a key aspect of this is to engage in sexual experiences. As such, she uses her good looks to attract the attention of boys and feels her knowledge in this area makes her independent and powerful. Connie’s desire to fast-forward her adolescence and become an adult, however, is fulfilled in a cruel and sinister way…