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Analyzing "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

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Submitted By immaculut1
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Richard McQuitery
Analyzing “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
English 221
Westwood College

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates is a story with connections to Bob Dylan, has themes of control and family, and has an antagonist that is believed to have been based on a serial killer. It is one of many stories of the ages that will be discussed for years to come. Joyce Carol Oates dedicated this short story to Bob Dylan. Oates admitted in an interview that after hearing Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” she was inspired to write the story. (Davidson, 1997)
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue (Dylan, 1965) After hearing these lyrics in Dylan’s song, it is very easy to identify the scene with Connie speaking to Arnold Friend through the screen door. The song’s eerie tone adds a greater depth to Arnold and Connie’s conversation. In an interview on Youtube, Oates was asked why she dedicated the story to Bob Dylan, and her response was: “…Dylan was in a phase where he was writing music like “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and that song, and some others on the same album were rather like fairy tales and nursery rhymes that had gone wrong. He had taken a kind of simplicity of imagery and linked it to a kind of gothic cautionary mold.” (Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and Bob Dylan, 2011) The song was just one ingredient in Oates’s recipe for a story that is still discussed decades after it was written. The haunting melody of Dylan’s song proved to be a great inspiration to Oates. Rock ‘n’ Roll was at the forefront of popular music, at the time that

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