Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in New York. She has published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories and poems. In her writing they are about her characters feeling physically or mentally trapped.
In her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been ? The situation of this story is about a teenage girl being followed back to her own house; once her mother and father leave a strange man comes to her house and gives her no choice but to leave with him. In her short story Where Is Here? It is about a strange man coming to a families home asking to look around for old memories sake for when he lived he here as a child. He explores the backyard and inside of the house but then tension rises from the mother and father of this story because they are worried of what he is cable of doing. So they are mentally trapped and a tiny bit physically trapped. Oates uses a variety of setting in her work, nevertheless they all have something in common, which is the power to make the characters feel trapped. ? In her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been about a teenage girl name Connie showing two side??™s one for her families eyes and the other for outsider??™s eyes. When she went out with her friends she left them for a boy and while being with this other boy another man keeps looking at her he tells her ??? Gonna get you baby???(17) Then later on this man shows up to her house with a friend. She winds up trapped by? him she has never known him till that one day she is physically trapped because though her house is big there are no other houses around her so he has her cornered.
If she were to scream no one would hear her. ??? After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled, because it couldn??™t be her father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way from the road-the driveway was long??¦??? (18) This shows that there is no one around ? her because if they lived closed to other people hearing a car come by would make no difference to her. When he talks to her she goes to her screen door to talk to him that way then he starts to scare her a bit there was no real way to protect herself because her door was just a screen door the phone was near her. ??? It??™s just a screen door. It??™s just nothing.
I mean anybody can break into screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to, anybody at all especially Arnold Friend.??? When he tells this to her she feels more frightened then before she feels as though he could do anything to her and she would not be able to stop him. She feels like no matter what she will wind up trapped. Oates makes the character in this story feel trapped because then the character would have no choice but to give in to the insane man. The short story Where Is Here? is about a man that goes back to his old house just to see it though another family lives there he still wishes to see the house. The father allows him to view his house but while he allows him it seems that he and his wife become very paranoid afterwards.
When they allow the stranger inside the father and mother feel as though something may happen and the setting gives you a sense that they must feel as though they are trapped. ??? Now he??™s coming out of the garage, and stepped back hastily from the window??? when this happens the father was getting a bit frightened himself he was looking at the man while he was in the garage he felt like he needed to watch him threw the windows. ??? The mother paused in the act of setting down plates, neatly folded paper napkins, and stainless-steel cutlery??¦???(376) When the mother stops setting everything for dinner it shows that she doesnot know what to do because she feels frightened that a stranger is just walking around there backyard and she has no idea what he intends to do. They feel as though if they make a wrong move he may go crazy so they must watch every step he takes and this makes the mother and father feel trapped that they can not do much. Therefore Oates does write about different situations but all her characters wind up trapped. In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been ? Connie was trapped in her house by her parents then this stranger shows up and gives her no choice but to leave with him.
In her stories there must be a villain but she also switches the stories around from who you thought would be the villain of the story. In stories setting plays a large roll so if you make a setting where the character is alone or is stuck in one specific place the characters began to change and tension flares up.
