“Where are you going, where have you been?” is a short story written by Joyce Carols Oates, which describes a strange man named Arnold Friend who is obsessed over a young teenager named Connie. Arnold Friend is much older than Connie and cannot be said to be like a child, yet he lures Connie out by using imagery from childhood. He talks to her partly like a lover and a person of authority, he fakes …showed first 75 words of 540 total…

…showed last 75 words of 540 total…she could’ve easily used pronouns. Thus she underlines the overwhelming presence of Arnold Friend, as a symbolic figure of a devil. Oates also constructs Arnold Friend as Connie’s only hope; her universe, her only escape and he alienate her from her house and surrounding. And like a puppet master he controls her strings, pushes her into doing something she would never do consciously, only a devil could do such a thing like this.