All language subtitles for Masterclass Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story - 09.Story Study “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been ”

My story, where are you going? Where

have you been? Is the most reprinted of

any story of mine. So I've asked

questions about it like every day in my

life. I get I get questions about that

story. So it is very interesting Genesis

to me because the first title of the

story was death in the maiden and that

seems to signal a kind of fairy tale

like death in the in the old mediev the

medieval woodcuts death is imagined as

this this figure with like a skull and

he may have a scythe in his hand and

he's standing behind a pretty girl with

her hair is kind of loose and she's

pimping in front of a mirror and death

is standing back here and you see death

in the mirror. She doesn't see death

because we see death in the mirror. She

sees herself

but we see death in the mirror. So if

you look upon the story that I have

written, you see that the fairy tale

elements are always there but they're

sort of submerged.

Death comes riding in on his horse. The

girl is walking in the woods. She's a

young girl, but she's all alone in the

woods, and she should not be alone in

the woods. So, it's a cautionary tale.

Death comes riding in on his horse.

Sometimes he's a knight. He's he's got

armor. He's his face is hidden,

but he's death. And he he asks her to

climb up on his horse. And he doesn't

grab her and put her on the horse.

He asks her if she wants to come and

ride with him. So she is the one who

goes on the horse. It's very important

that the maiden is volal. She goes on

the horse with this man. She doesn't

know a stranger. And they ride off and

she rides off to her death. And so my

story is a replica of that that sort of

fairy tale situation.

This the story

is based also upon something that really

happened. So most writing has a number

of influences. Something really happened

in the southwest. I read about it in

Life magazine and there was a a a

two-page photographic spread of these

terrible killings. The Pied Piper of

Tucson, Arizona.

And there was a a man who was about 30.

He pretended to be a teenager. He dyed

his hair. He was quite short and he wore

cowboy boots with newspapers stuck in

the boots so he would look taller. And

he dressed like a teenager and he tried

to pretend to be a teenager. He hung out

around shopping malls and he befriended

these girls who would become strolling

along and one by one he he was murdering

girls. But what interested me about the

story was this p appalling and

terrifying fact that some of the some of

the teenagers knew that he was murdering

girls and they didn't tell anybody. So

they would go home to their parents and

they didn't tell

they protected him. Like why I thought

why would they protect this horrible

person

who he's like Charles Manson maybe that

type of charismatic

man praying upon adolescence

teenagers. So he seduced them in some

way but then even as he was murdering

them they they they defended him.

Finally it all came out and he was

arrested.

But I didn't want to read any more about

it. So I just read like two pages and

then I I thought, well, I don't want to

know any more about it. So I didn't look

up any I didn't do any research. So when

I wrote the story, I thought I would be

writing about the phenomenon of

teenagers protecting a murderer. But

when I actually wrote the story, I got

much more interested in the victim who

is Connie. So as I wrote the story and

thought about it, all my sympathy

shifted to her. So then her name was

Connie as the first line. So I'm just

focusing on her. Then the murderer comes

in

couple pages later and he doesn't

necessarily have a name right away. So

rather than start with the murder and

with the phenomenon of the teenagers

protecting him, I started with the

victim. And so the whole focus is

different.

But the story wasn't written immediately

with Connie as the protagonist.

It's a it's a good example of how a

story develops.

So Connie is only 15 and she's very

superficial and she's sort of a typical

teenage girl, high school girl in the

beginning of the story. But then as the

story develops and death comes for her

and she has this experience of of

terror, she be becomes much more mature.

And at the end of the story, she she

gets up and she goes out through the

screen door of her own valition. It's

it's as if she's deciding that she's

going to be courageous and she's not any

longer this superficial teenage girl,

but she's somebody much more dignified

by the end of the story. And of course,

she has two personalities. She has one

personality with her mother and a

different personality when she's with

the teenagers. Like she's flirtatious

and funny and sarcastic

when she's with her friends. And then

when she's with her mother, she's kind

of sulky and resentful. She has a lot of

secrets from her mother and but with her

friend, she's she's this very pretty

girl and older boys are interested in

her, but with her mother, she's sort of

pretending. So, it's kind of this double

personality that teenage teenagers have.

Uh, teenage girls have, I assume teenage

boys have also. The story is actually

about a girl who realizes that her

her superficial self is not her real

self. As as death approaches her, it's

almost like the other story that I was

reading, death is coming for her. She

realizes that at the end and she becomes

very dignified. I wanted to show the

layers that we have in our personalities

that we may seem superficial and trivial

and very distracted by a lot of trivial

things in our lives, but if we were

going to die tomorrow, we we'd forget

all about this trivial stuff and we

would just focus on very important

things. Like she she thinks about her

family and she sort of thinks about her

family in a way that she hadn't she

hadn't before.

So the story ends with the predator

whose name calls himself Arnold friend.

That's obviously not his name, but

that's what he calls himself. And he's

standing outside the door, the screen

door, and Connie is in the house. And

again, as in the parable or the fairy

tale or the ballad of death in the

maiden, she has to act viciently. He's

not going to come and get her. She makes

her own judgment. After a while, she

could hear again. She was sitting on the

floor with her wet back against the

wall. Our old friend was saying from the

door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone

back." She kicked the phone away from

her. "No, honey. Pick it up and put it

back." Right. She picked it up and put

it back. The dial tone stopped. That's a

good girl. Now you come outside. She was

hollow with what had been fear, but was

now just an emptiness. All that

screaming had blasted out of her. She

sat, one leg cramped under her, and deep

inside her brain was something like a

pinpoint of light that kept going and

would not let her relax. She thought,

"I'm not going to see my mother again."

She thought, "I'm not going to sleep on

my bed again." Her bright green blouse

was all wet.

Arnold Fred said in a gentle loud voice

that was like a stage voice. That place

where you came from ain't there anymore

and where you had mine to go is canceled

out. This place you see now inside your

daddy's house is nothing but a cardboard

box I can knock down any time.

You know that and always did know it.

You hear me? She thought, I've got to

think. I've got to think. I've got to

know what to do.

We'll go out to a nice field out in the

country where it smells so nice and it's

sunny. Arnold friend said, "I'll have my

arms tight around you so you won't need

to try to get away and I'll show you

what love is like, but it does." The

hell with this house. It looks silent.

All right, he said. He ran a fingernail

down the screen and noise did not make a

count of shiver as it would have the day

before. Now put your hand on your heart,

honey. Feel that? That feels solid, too.

But we know better. Be nice to me. Be

sweet like it can be because what else

is there for a girl like you but to be

sweet and pretty and give in and get

away before her people come back. She

felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed

to enclose it. She thought for the first

time in her life it was nothing that was

hers that belonged to her but just a

pounding living thing inside the body

that wasn't really hers either.

You don't want them to get hurt on the

front went

meaning her family. Come on, honey. Get

up all by yourself. She stood. Now, turn

this way. That's right. Come over here.

Come to me.

The incantation was kindly now. Come out

through the kitchen to me, honey, and

let's see a smile. Try. You're a brave,

sweet girl. And now they're eating corn

and hot dogs cooked to bursting over an

outdoor fire. That's Conniey's family

who was at a picnic. And they don't know

one thing about you, and they never did.

and honey, you're better than them

because not a one of them would have

done this for you. In other words,

Connie is sacrificing herself. She's

going out to meet the predator before

her family comes home. The implication

is she's going to murder all of them

unless she comes out, which she does.

Connie felt the lenolium under her feet.

It was cool. She brushed her hair back

out of her eyes. Our little friend let

go of the post tentatively and opened

his arms for her, his elbows pointing in

toward each other and his wrists limp to

show that this was an embarrassed

embrace and a little mocking. He didn't

want to make herself conscious. She put

out her hand against the screen. She

watched herself push the door slowly

open as if she were back safe somewhere

in the other doorway, watching this body

and this head of long hair moving out

into the sunlight where her friend

waited.

My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said

in a half-sung sigh. That had nothing to

do with her brown eyes, but was taken up

just the same by the vast sunlit reaches

of the land behind him and on all sides

of him. So much land that Connie had

never seen before and did not recognize

except to know that she was going to it.

Sometimes when you when you write a

short story, you may overwrite and

there's a little little more pros than

you need. And when you read it through

kind of quickly, you see that really it

ended. It ended a little sooner. Like

this story could have gone on for

another paragraph or two, but when I

reread it, I saw that it really ends

when she makes her decision to go

outside and she understands that the

body she's been inhabiting is finite and

she doesn't really own her body. And he

says the house is like cardboard. In

other words, our our lives are very very

finite and very mortal. And she leaves

the house of protection of her family

and she's going to leave her body and

she's going to go out into that vast

sunlit space. It's like she's going back

to nature. So that's like the ending of

the story. We don't really have to know

what happens next. So I I felt that a

person who is able to acknowledge death

and embrace death and move into death

was uh no matter what age that person is

that there's a real maturity.

And so I felt that she transcended her

adolescent self.

One assignment I that I definitely um s

suggest and advise for for you as a as a

experimental writer. Take some writing

that you've done actually something that

that you've been working on that you

have some hope and some investment in

and look at it from a different

perspective. Let's say it may be in a

third person and it's a little bit slow

and you you don't know what's wrong with

it to recast it as first person. So

you're telling the story yourself.

Another thing you could do is if it's

set in the past,

radically update it and make it in

present tense. In other words, instead

of saying once upon a time there was

this girl, you say she is walking, she

is on her cell phone, she is doing

something and make it historic present.

If you can do that, it makes it very

lively and sort of breathless. It can

completely re revitalize some pros.

Those are experiments.

As with a house,

you can walk around the house. The front

door, you can go in through the front

door. Uh, you always thought you could

go through the front door, but then one

day because I told you to, you walk

around to the back and you look through

a window and you just see a completely

different scene and and suddenly the

back window is a more interesting

perspective.

I had an experience just the other day

with a young woman writing a really

really interesting beginning of a novel

from the perspective of a nine-year-old

girl and there was a teacher uh a fourth

grade teacher a tall black woman with

long dreadlocks and and it was so

obvious to me that the real protagonist

in this novel is that teacher. So I said

to the young to my my student I said you

know the excitement of this chapter is

in that teacher and she looked at me and

she sort of understood

of course because the teacher is her age

and the little girl is sort of like just

a child and she can't really make the

little girl be interesting because she's

only nine. But the teacher who has to

deal with all these children in a in a

multi-racial classroom,

that's where the drama takes place. So I

would think the next time she brings her

her work work in, it's going to be this

adult perspective and much more

interesting. So that's that's something

to do where you you take a different

perspective.