In the story, Where are you going, Where have you been, is set in a regular town. In this town, Connie goes to high school and goes out on weeknights with her friends to hang out with boys. The city is where she wants to be, her home is a different story. On the outside, and from anyone's point of view, her house seems nice and normal. Connie would rather be anywhere but at home. " Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home:" The plots structure is somewhat random. First Connie is at school, then out late at night, then back at home where she hardly talks to anyone. It has a very fast pace, but still organized and clear about where and what Connie is doing.
Point of View:
The story is told from third person omniscient. We get to view not only what is happening on the outside, but also how Connie is feeling throughout the story. We get every view of the entire story, which gets the reader more involved. We get to know how she feels about her sisters, her mom, the boys she hangs out with and Arnold Friend. "She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn't really hers either." This is how the author engages the readers. By feeling what shes feeling and also seeing everything around the character, it puts us there.
Characterization:
There are many characters throughout the story. Here we meet Connie's mother who is always nagging on her, or negative. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" Her father though is nothing like her mother. He hardly speaks to the family, and sometimes hardly even looks at Connie. It's like she's invisible to him. June is Connie's older sister. She's the favored one of the family, and is nothing like Connie at all. "Why don't you keep your room clean like you sister? How've you got your hair fixed - what the hell stink? Hair spray? you don't see you sister using that junk." Then there's Connie." She was fifteen and she had quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was alright." At the end of story we meet Arnold Friend. Who we come to find out just wants Connie, and he's up to no good. He says he's eighteen, but Connie sees that he's drunk and is wearing makeup to cover up his old face. "She watched this smile come, awkward as if he was smiling from inside a mask. his whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but forgotten about his throat." Setting:
Here the story is set in a regular town with regular people. Connie goes to school and hangs out with her friends in the city. "She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended ..."(249). "Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where the older kids hung out"(251). When Connie's not at school or in the city, she's at home where she doesn't want to be. " (253) the backyard ran off into weeds and a fence like line of trees and behind it the shy was perfectly blue and still." Theme:
Here the theme is still unclear to me, but there is something that I got out of it. From what was told in the story, the theme is nothing is like what it seems. Connie goes out in a boys car and having a good time. When a man in the car next to her says "'Gonna gee you, baby'" (252), Connie doesn't realize it, but this man would soon change her life forever. When he arrives at her house, and says everything he knows about her, her family, her friends, she starts to worry and realizes that this isn't another high school boy hitting on her. That's when she realizes shes's in trouble. Also another theme in this could be love even if it doesn't show. Arnold kept saying if you get your family involved, or wait long enough to come with him, she would be sorry. At the end she eventually steps outside and walks toward the man. I think she did it for her family, that way she wouldn't be a problem for them anymore. 