Perspectives

Putting “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates into perspective is a good way to learn more about its themes, about the author’s style, and to connect it with other contexts.

Current issues & Critical reception

When it was published in 1966, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates has been very debated by the critics in terms to the author’s intent. Some have viewed the story as realistic and focused on its sources of inspiration, the Charles Schmid killings. Others have interpreted it to be an allegory of loss of innocence, temptation and a critique of early sexual exploration.

Either way, the story is still relevant for today’s society.

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Literary period

Joyce Carol Oates has been writing both Modernist and Post-Modernist works.

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Works with the same theme

For the theme of versions of reality, we recommend that you read the short story “The Signal Man” by Charles Dickens, in which a rational narrator begins to question reality as a railway signal man is killed in a way that he already had predicted, without knowing that he was going to be the victim.

Also, “The North London Book of the Dead” by Will Self introduces a new interpretation to death, as a man meets his dead mother one day in another part of London.

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Moreover, here you can read about the screen adaptions of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates.