Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” » tells the story of a young girl's journey to find her own identity. Along the way, she uses her beauty and sexuality to create, in his mind, a sense of maturity that ultimately becomes his downfall. She believes that by spending her summer days at the mall, dressing differently than she would wear at home, and flirting with older boys, while finding pleasure in ignoring boys that she knows, she is her own person and is creating her own identity, different from that of her mother or sister. It is only at the end of the story, when Arnold Friend enters her home, that she begins to realize what is truly important. The title of the story comes into play at the end when she leaves with Arnold. She does not recognize the city outside; she doesn't know where she's going. She realizes that all the time she spent worrying about appearances was meaningless; she couldn't tell where she was, because her journey was only just beginning. At the beginning of the story, we meet Connie, a fifteen-year-old girl living with her parents and older sister. We see right away that Connie has a habit of checking her appearance in mirrors and observing others to see if they notice her and her beauty. "She had a habit of laughing quickly and nervously, craning her neck to look in mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was okay." (Oates) From this sentence we can see that Connie spends a lot of time thinking about her own appearance. It soon becomes apparent that she does this with other people's appearances as well, as shown for the first time in her mother's description. "His mother [...] didn't have many reasons... in the middle of a paper... he addressed it to the other boy, taking his time." (Oates) The way she keeps her words to make it seem like she's not interested and looks past him to the other boy in the car shows her trying to control the two boys with his disinterest. She uses her appearance to control the boys, and here we see that she is unable to control these two because they are both wearing sunglasses. “The driver's glasses were metallic and reflected everything in miniature. » (Oates) Through the sunglasses, everything is distorted and Connie has no control. The driver introduces himself; “I want to introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's my real name and I'm going to be your friend, honey” (Oates) Throughout the conversation, Arnold tries to convince Connie to take a ride with him in his car , but she ignores all his advances. Works Cited Oates, Joyce Carol "Where are you going, where have you been?"