The dynamics of coercion and fear in 'Where are you going, where have you been?', a story by Joyce Carol Oates

• Autor(a) principal: Mancelos, João de
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/4233
• topic: Coercion; Fear; Gothic short story; Joyce Carol Oates

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966) is Joyce Carol Oates’s most celebrated and anthologized short story, adapted to the cinema in 1985 (Smooth Talk, directed by Joyce Chropa). The narrative was inspired by a Life magazine article on serial killer Charles Schmid, who murdered several girls just to know what it felt like, and by the author’s interpretation of Bob Dylan’s famous song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The tense plot presents a persuasive and menacing young man, Arnold Friend, who tries to convince Connie Wyatt, a fifteen-year-old girl, to join him for a car ride. Connie declines, feeling there is something wrong with the charismatic, but rather insisting and loquacious, young man. Thwarted by the girl’s repeated refusals and excuses, Friend becomes increasingly more threatening, and menaces Connie’s family (currently absent from home). The tense dialogue that occurs between both characters — a masterpiece of suspense — shows the power of coercion and the strategies it resorts to, namely (1) trickery, (2) manipulation, and (3) threat. At the same time, thanks to Connie, the reader becomes aware of the different responses to coercion. There is a well-structured crescendo that includes (1) anxiety, (2) fear, (3) panic, and probably — the ending is ambiguous — (4) submission. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” proves that rational strategies to cope with fear are futile when the threatening individual is a manipulative psychopath, well aware of the girl’s weaknesses, and the potential victim is an insecure young person. In this paper I intend to analyze (1) the dynamics of coercion and fear; (2) different strategies used in the process of coercion; (3) several responses to threat; (4) how they are represented in this story, in terms of literary strategies, in order to create a suspenseful situation. To substantiate my analysis, I resort to the studies of several specialists in the field of gothic literature, criminal psychology, and, naturally, to my own opinions.