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ESSAY SAMPLE ON "WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN" |
"Where are you going, Where have you been"
The story, ?Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates is truly
littered with conventions of Psychoanalysis. Freud developed a list of defense
mechanisms used by the human subconscious in order to deal with issues too intense for
the conscious mind. These strategies of the psyche are translated into symbols scattered
throughout this work. These symbols are expressed through the characters of Connie, and
Arnold Friend.
The first convention is denial. Denial is when the subconscious cannot handle an issue
or event and forces the individual to falsify reality and flatly refuse to accept it.
Denial rears its head in several places in this story. The first occurrence is Connie's
father's denial of the possibility of mischief in his budding adolescent fifteen year
old. Most adults(especially parents) know what it means to be a teenager, so it seems
odd that Connie's father does not take more interest in her Friday night goings-on.
Instead of asking questions and probing into the situation he chooses to stay complacent
about it thereby avoiding a confrontation with her and also avoiding having to deal with
issues of her newly found sexuality and the circumstances surrounding it.
The most obvious example of denial falls in the lap of Connie herself. Connie is prone
to deny the possibility of danger in the confrontation with Arnold Friend. This could be
out of need for acceptance as she does not receive the attention a young girl entering
adulthood requires.
Another convention explored in this work is repression. Repression is defined as the
mind essential strategy for hiding desires and fears. It is the fact that Connie is
denied the attention at home that causes her to seek it through the only other outlet she
understands at the that age...her sexuality. Obviously, the group that is most receptive
to this is boys. Her desire to be accepted causes her to repress her initial feelings of
fear and uneasiness she experiences in the early minutes of her meeting with Arnold,
which ultimately proves to be her downfall.
There is also a prime example of displacement in the very first paragraphs of this tale
of goulish nature. Displacement is when the mind takes a feeling or emotion it does
not(or can't) accept and instead of aiming it at the person or object that has caused the
anguish, displaces it onto someone or something else that is either more convenient or
less capable of defending itself. For example, if a father gets scolded at work and
comes home and yells at his wife, she in turn gets angry at their son who expresses his
anger by kicking the dog! We see this mental strategy in Connie's mother. In the first
paragraph Oates tells of how Connie's mother is constantly scolding her for very typical
behaviors of a teenager...primping, self-admiration, using hair spray and make-up, etc.
These scoldings originate from her mother's inability to deal with her own lack of
beauty. Connie's mother cannot confront anyone about the fact that she has aged so she
takes out her frustration on Connie for having the things she can't regain herself, such
as youth and beauty.
The final defense mechanism displayed in this piece of literature is rationalization.
This ties in with denial to some extent here. Connie initially experiences feelings of
uneasiness, discomfort, and even fear by Arnold's demeanor and presence. This would seem
normal enough but then rather than go inside and lock the door right away she
rationalizes her own safety by accepting the compliments paid to her by Arnold. While
she doesn't exactly say "thank you" to him she does cock her head and blush which he
notices quickly. Upon noticing her acknowledgments he learns what makes her comfortable
and what doesn't and proceeds to use them to his advantage in order to eventually get her
into a position where she becomes helpless and finally falls prey to him.
Finally, although it can't proven without much research and actual contact with the
author, the possibility of the author actually using this work to project a personal
experience must at least be mentioned. As contact with this author would be virtually
impossible without perhaps hiring a private detective it is possible to conceive that
maybe at sometime in her life, Joyce Carol Oates might have been accosted or actually
assaulted by a man similar to the villain in this story. Her subconscious might find it
easier to deal with the terrible real event by expressing it through literature. This
succeeds in allowing her to come to grips with her fear without suppressing it and at the
same time keeping it less threatening than talking about the actual experience.
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