School shootings, bombings, rape, and murder are words that are commonly seen in newspaper headlines and heard on the morning news. To most people these acts seem like senseless violence. However, writers like Joyce Carol Oates and Flannery O’Connor use these same violent images to deliver a powerful moral message. Their stories “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” are very comparable in the lessons that they teach.Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” begins with the introduction of it’s main character, Connie, a fifteen year- old girl. Oates makes Connie’s vanity quiet well know by telling the reader that Connie has the “habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors”. Indeed, it is this vanity and Connie’s innocence that places her right in the path of Arnold Friend. Arnold will confirm this by telling Connie that there is nothing else for “a pretty girl like you but to be sweet and give in.” In fact, critics generally interpret this story as Connie’s initiation into evil.What’s in a name? If you’re talking about one of Joyce Carol Oates’s characters, a name can say a lot. Arnold Friend’s name can be interpreted as “aren’t no friend” or “A. Friend” (Johnson 150). Either way his is a demonic figure that represents the death of Connie’s spirit. In fact, Arnold Friend is based on a serial killer know as “The Pied Piper of Tucson.” As Oates reports, this “tabloid psychopath” specialized in “the seduction and occasional murder of teenage girls” (Wesley). The Pied Piper was in his thirties; yet, he managed to counterfeit teenage dress, talk, and behavior. He also stuffed rags into his leather boots to give him height. These elements of the Pied Piper’s behavior are very obvious...
