Joyce carol oates biography summary worksheet answers

t's summer, and fifteen-year-old Connie spends much of her time lounging
around the house, goingout with friends, and meeting boys. She's a little vain,
spends way too much time looking at herself in the mirror, and is perpetually
annoyed with her entire family—especially her mom and older sister.

Theme

ce Carol Oates

At a Glance

 The plot of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" hinges on
the threat of sexual violence. Oates subtly develops this theme,
depicting Arnold Friend as a manipulative older man who has targeted
Connie for her youth and beauty. Connie's exact fate is unknown, but
Arnold does say that he'll take her to a field and "show [her] what love is
like." It's unclear if she survives.
 Despite her rebellious and deceitful attitude, Connie is an innocent girl at
heart. She has just started experimenting with boys and describes these
encounters as being "the way it was in movies," displaying a sweetness
and naivete that will later be destroyed. Her romantic ideals are
shattered when Arnold Friend manipulates her into coming out of the
house.
 Family is another important theme in the story. Connie is critical of her
family, describing her sister as plain and boring and laughing at her
mother for trusting her. She refuses to attend a barbecue at her aunt's
house. In the end, however, Connie demonstrates how much she loves
her family by sacrificing herself for them.

Setting

Social setting

The social setting used in the short story includes several aspects related to American society in
the 1960s.

Firstly, the story presents the relationship between family members, with a particular focus on
Connie, who is a teenage girl. In her family, the father is mostly an absent figure while the
mother praises Connie’s older sister June and criticizes Connie. In her turn, Connie despises her
sister’s righteous behavior and hides things from her parent

Context

Born on June 16, 1938, in Lockport, New York, Joyce Carol Oates spent her
childhood on her parents’ farm. Lockport, a small rural town, had struggled
economically since the Great Depression, but it provided Oates with a wholesome
environment in which to grow up. She attended elementary school in a one-room
schoolhouse, where she developed a fascination with writing. Although her
parents were not highly educated, they were always supportive of her budding
talents. Oates’s grandmother gave her a typewriter when she was a teenager, and
in high school she used it to write novels and short stories. She won a scholarship
to Syracuse University, where she majored in English and graduated as
valedictorian. She subsequently pursued and received a master’s degree in
English from the University of Wisconsin. While studying there, she met her
future husband, Raymond Smith. Though she kept her maiden name, she would
later publish suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith.

After marrying Smith in 1962, Oates and her new husband relocated to Detroit,
where the bleak atmosphere and social turmoil that characterized Detroit in the
1960s influenced much of Oates’s writing. After securing a teaching position at
the University of Windsor in 1968, she and Smith relocated to Canada for a ten-
year period. In Canada, they started a small publishing house and literary
magazine, the Ontario Review. In 1978, Oates and Smith moved to Princeton,
New Jersey, where Oates is currently the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor
of Humanities at Princeton University.

Oates’s fiction has garnered much critical acclaim. She is a three-time finalist for
the Pulitzer Prize—for Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde
(2000). In 1970, she won the National Book Award for her novel them (1969).
Before winning, she had been a finalist three times—for Wonderland (1971);
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990); and Blonde (2000).

Standards

Joyce Carol Oates is a well-known American writer who has a broad literary output. She has written best-selling novels, stories, poetry, and essays, and won the 1969 National Book Award. Most of her literary works reflect the hardships in society.

See the fact file below for more information on the Joyce Carol Oates or alternatively, you can download our 23-page Joyce Carol Oates worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY YEARS

• Joyce Carol Oates was the youngest child of Frederic James, a tool-and-die designer. Her mother was Caroline Oates.
• Oates developed her passion for writing while experiencing some hardship at a farm in Lockport, New York, where she was born.
• Her dedication to writing was immediately seen by the people around her. Her grandma gave her the first typewriter she owned, and she used it throughout her years in secondary and tertiary education.
• Oates graduated from Williamsville South High School in 1956.
• After high school, Oates received a scholarship from Syracuse University in New York, where she graduated with a degree in English.
• She then took part in a fiction contest sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine and was a joint winner of the competition.
• In 1961, Oates received her Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, the same year that she married her fellow student, Raymond J. Smith.
• Oates began a career as a teacher before pursuing literature and writing, with her first teaching years spent at the University of Detroit in Bea