Short Story: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Overview
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" centers on Connie, a fifteen-year-old girl who is torn between adolescent vanity and the obligations of family life. She enjoys attention, practices her looks in mirrors, and flirts with boys, cultivating a separate inner life from the more sober, workaday world of her older sister and mother. That fragile private identity is brutally confronted by the arrival of Arnold Friend, a charismatic and menacing man who arrives at Connie's home one summer afternoon and gradually strips away her illusions of control.
The story moves from everyday teenage scenes to a tense, claustrophobic confrontation that forces Connie to confront the realities of desire, power, and vulnerability. The narrative closes on an ambiguous, chilling moment that leaves Connie's fate uncertain but irrevocably altered.

Plot
Connie lives with her family in a suburban setting, where routine and adult responsibilities contrast sharply with her flirtatious, image-focused life. After a day at the mall and a flirtatious encounter at a drive-in, she returns to an empty house; her family has gone to a barbecue, leaving her alone. Late in the afternoon a car pulls into the driveway, and Arnold Friend and his companion Ellie Oscar appear at the door, looking for Connie.
Arnold quickly shifts from seemingly flirtatious to coercive. He speaks with unsettling familiarity about Connie's life and family, manipulates her emotions, and offers threats veiled as promises. He plays music, uses his car and appearance as instruments of control, and insinuates that he knows intimate details about her and her family. As the pressure mounts and the lines between seduction and menace blur, Connie ultimately capitulates, stepping out into the night in a moment that suggests resignation or forced submission rather than triumphant choice.

Themes
The story explores the collision of adolescent desire and predation, showing how fantasies of romance and independence can make a young person vulnerable to exploitation. It interrogates how image and identity function for teenagers: Connie's self-conception is largely performed for others, which leaves her exposed when confronted by someone who refuses to play by ordinary social rules. Power is central, as Arnold's manipulative tactics expose how easily coercion can masquerade as seduction.
Other prominent themes include loss of innocence, the instability of selfhood during adolescence, and the social context of gender relations in the mid-20th century. The narrative questions free will and fate, suggesting that personal choices and external forces converge in ways that can be impossible to disentangle.

Characters and Symbolism
Connie embodies youthful self-absorption and the fragile boundaries between fantasy and reality. Arnold Friend functions as both a literal threat and a symbolic figure: he can be read as a predator, a moral corrupter, or a demonic presence, depending on interpretation. His clothes, vehicle, and language are performative, mixing charm with grotesque exaggeration to unsettle and intimidate.
Objects such as the car and the radio serve as extensions of Arnold's power, tools for seduction and coercion. The story's title, repeated and haunting, underscores questions of direction, origin, and accountability, inviting readers to consider who controls movement and choice.

Style and Legacy
The narrative uses close psychological detail and shifts between Connie's perspective and a more detached narration, creating intimacy while also maintaining critical distance. The prose is spare and tension-driven, with the story's final, unresolved scene amplifying its lasting emotional impact. Widely anthologized and discussed, the story is considered a landmark examination of adolescent identity and predation and has been adapted into the film "Smooth Talk." It remains a potent, unsettling exploration of how desire, power, and vulnerability intersect.