Scariest Joyce Carol Oates Story

I do not recall reading any of Oates' fiction before this short story. She shocked me with her straightforwardness towards the terrible. Ab out a decade later, having read even more of her, I still find her approach to the terrible puts authors like Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy to shame. And what is it that all lives share but the terrible event that breaks hearts and minds, that transgresses the peace we want in our lives, the scarring event we carry forward until our deaths?

A Summary and Analysis of Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’:

‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is a 1966 short story by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. It is regarded by many critics as Oates’ best story, and is widely studied and praised for its treatment of some of the darker aspects of early 1960s America.

First published in the literary journal Epoch in 1966, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ was inspired by a series of real-life murders and dedicated to Bob Dylan, whose song ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ was another inspiration on the story.

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In the last analysis, ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is a powerful – one might almost say archetypal – exploration of the confusion, uncertainty, and hesitation that attend on adolescence, as young people, and especially young girls in this regard, negotiate the difficult path from girlhood to womanhood. We might call this ‘rite of passage’ or ‘coming of age’, but Oates’ story, given the dark true events that inspired it, is unsettling because it implies that coercion and threats are not only usual but perhaps even necessary, at least in a patriarchal society, to wrest indecisive young girls over that threshold. 

What greater horror show is there other than a clear-eyed look at our existence? 

The Narrative has an online library which has several of Joyce Carol Oates' short stories (not the one mentioned above) and non-fiction pieces here. Check them out and see what you think.

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