Joyce Carol Oates’s Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
...gles. We witness this temptation through color, especially light and dark. Light suggests good, while dark implies evil. When Arnold Friend and Ellie call upon Connie one Sunday afternoon, she is wearing a bright green blouse. The color green indicates fertility and youth, but as time progresses during the visit, Connie’s “bright green blouse was all wet” (Oates, 342), darkened with sweat. The sweat is Arnold’s dark and evil presence weakening her ability to fight back his tempting voice as he lures her out of the house. He entices Connie into disregarding her instinct to fight by threatening harm on her family and home. Arnold claims, “this place you are now-inside your daddy’s house-is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down anytime” (Oates, 342) and “you don’t want them to get hurt” (Oates, 342). Ironically, Connie’s instincts tell her to step over the threshold in order to save her family. Although the reader may think that this is an act of maturity, it was Connie’s immaturity that caused her to curiously flirt with him, and as she does, she was drawn deeper and dee...