An Alternative Approach To Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” ...part 2

Part II

Why can’t we admit a Biblical discussion into this analysis, since it’s assumed to permeate most western literature? It is assumed quite often that Whitehead’s famous notion – the one in which all western philosophers subsequent to Plato are more or less elaborate footnotes to him – is reflected in literature with the Bible taking the privileged seat. There is certainly some validity in this approach (Frye has done much to this end) and when concerning medieval literature it is quite appropriate; serving for inspiration the role ambient yeast filled in the bread bakeries of the time. But in this case, with Oates’ story, it is explicitly inadmissible for two reasons:
1.) Biblical contextualization is by necessity a branch of historicism – it assumes the author to be functioning to some degree under the influence of the text of the Bible. Thus the historical-cultural situation has to be considered, which we have already done in the case of this story – the late sixties was not a great awakening. Moreover, following the threads further back and trying to prove your assumption would only de-situate the text in a pointless attempt to eternalize the Bible once more (something it doesn’t need this story to do) and would make as much sense as reading Confucius or Sophocles in search of couched biblical references.
2.) The effort is precluded by the story itself: “One Sunday Connie got up at eleven – none of them bothered with church – and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun.” So regardless of the authors inspiration (which we believe is pretty easy to identify as Schmid not a biblical parable) she has subtracted its influence from the story. “[N]one of them bothered with church” does not mean that the events that befell Connie are righteous punishment for her lax faith, because the whole family doesn’t bother and Connie alone suffers. What it does mean is that all those strange moments when she notes something uncanny about Friend, gets an eerie flash of recognition in the way he dresses and talks she’s not vaguely remembering the teachings of the bible but is instead seeing the imperfectly manifested images and sentiments created in the popular culture of the time. Before the arrival of Friend we are given this description: “Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs..”

The most overt allusion to Dylan is when Friend calls Connie his sweet blue eyed girl, which had nothing to do with her brown eyes. This is of course, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” the one song Oates admitted was part of the inspiration behind the story. The last Stanza is almost a direct description of the encounter between Friend and Connie:

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

Friend’s imperative tone, his insistence that she leave for the sake of her family, his disheveled throwback look, his position outside her door all resonate with the image described in the song as if Connie were recognizing the signs of a love promised by the song. Earlier in the song we hear the line: “The carpet, too, is moving under you”, which approximates the description of the terror inspired vertigo Connie experiences when she attempts to use the phone to for help. The very outline of the encounter between Connie and Friend – with a stranger approaching someone at their door – is a recurrent theme in many songs by Dylan.

In “Like a Rolling Stone”

You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

…and…

You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

Several of the images here correlate with descriptions in the story. Related to the “vacuums of his eyes” is the description of Friend’s eyes: “He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light.” Early in the story we are told how Connie and her friends enjoyed judging the people around them: “they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed by who amused or interested them” – which fits with the amusement at the ragged Napoleon in the song. One of the host of the XYZ Sunday Jamboree is Napoleons-Son and Friend himself cuts a Napoleonic figure with his short stature and stuffed boots. And this injunction: “Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse” seems to be the very command Friend is trying to get Connie to recognize. He tells her, “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t … And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me”. Here we have a reflection of the songs reference to having no secrets to conceal, not being able to refuse Napoleon and through Connie’s response a reference to the language that he uses. She, in response to his command, yells “Shut up! You’re Crazy!... People don’t talk like that, you’re crazy.” The language that Arnold Friend uses and specifically the way he uses it, in his Pied Piper lilting way is, indeed his direct appropriation of the spiritual or ideological authority of the music. So in very much the same way that cult leaders or other rogue messiahs can use a good handle of scripture to manipulate people for whom such a text forms an ethical and spiritual bedrock, Friend is able to manipulate Connie because his injunctions seem to be emanating from the very music that was part of the structure of her understanding of the world.

The description of the music in Friend’s voice is thorough. In the course of the encounter we are told: “… he spoke in a fast, bright monotone”, “He spoke in a simple lilting voice exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song”, “[Connie] recognized … the sing-song way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding but serious and a little melancholy”, “He had the voice of the man on the radio” , “His words were not angry but only part of an incantation” and the final words he spoke in the story were “in a half-sung sigh”.