1. “Where Are You Going? Where Have you Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates “Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.” – Joyce Carol Oates Make Up Assignment: Complete the three “discussion” activities. When you are done, you will

2. First, a little bit about the inspiration.... The Pied Piper

3. It was Life and Time magazines that turned a local story from Tucson, Arizona, into a national abomination. Reporters came from all over, to be sure, but on March 4, 1966, Life printed an ominous photo of the desert landscape where three girls had disappeared and the story of Charles Howard Schmid, Jr., or "Smitty," became international news. He had been arrested four months earlier on November 11, just after marrying a fifteen-year-old girl whom he'd met on a blind date. The article was published even before the juries in two separate trials had decided his fate.

4. Dubbed "The Pied Piper of Tucson," for his ability to get girls to fall for him, he stood five feet, four inches tall, but added three more inches by padding his stack-heeled cowboy boots with rags and tin cans. He also dyed his reddish-brown hair black, used pancake make-up, whitened his lips, and applied a fake mole to his left cheek— a "beauty" mark. Arrogant and narcissistic, he came from a wealthy family, so he used the niceties he could buy to impress young high school girls. He adopted the droopy- eyed look associated with Elvis, his idol, and acquired a rock musician's mystique.

5. His tiny house on his parents' property was the scene of many parties. Tucson society was not merely shaken by the murders of three of their young women but by what the details of those murders revealed about its adolescent population—sex clubs, drinking parties, blackmail, cover-ups for murder, and even connections with the crime underworld. Parents suddenly became more strict, more aware now that their kids weren't safe and maybe weren't even behaving properly. When kids looked to someone like Charles Schmid for answers, there was something terribly wrong.

6. Smitty hung around the high school, luring girls into his cars. They hung out on Speedway, a main drag, and they were easy prey for a predator—even one who stumbled around in his ridiculous boots. He became something of a folk hero to kids who didn't quite fit in, because he was older and he knew things. He was strange, but he livened things up in a desert town full of retired people where nothing much was happening. Smitty made things interesting. Even so, it was difficult to figure out just what it was that inspired kids to follow his lead.

7. The writer for the Life article, Don Moser, made a telling connection between him and a song that was popular that winter of 1965: Hey, come on, babe, follow me I'm the Pied Piper, follow me I'm the Pied Piper And I'll show you where it's at. Many girls went out with him and three never returned. There are a lot of places to bury a body in the desert.

8. Grab a piece of notebook paper and something to write with! You also want your story packet with you too!

9. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" wrestles with some of the oldest Big Questions in the history of humanity. What is the nature of evil? Why is there suffering in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? The sinister Arnold Friend seems to take on metaphysical proportions in the text: more than just an individual, he is Death, everything that opposes life, love, and joy. It is only in confronting Death that Connie is able to transcend her own individual self and aspire to something higher. But this isn't just a metaphysical horror story. Set in the context of 1960s America, the story also explores how violence might be built into the structure of society, into mores and values that some might feel are oppressive or unjust.

10. Choose one of the following questions: 1.So Arnold Friend is a creep. What does he say and do that makes him so terrifying? 2.What are the physical and psychological effects of Arnold's threats on Connie? How does Connie react to the pressure of these threats? How would you react? 3.Do you see a change in Connie's mental and emotional state over the course of the story? Compare and contrast different moments to support your view. 4.What motivates Arnold Friend? Is he an ordinary person, a psychopath, or something more mythical, like a representation of evil, death, or even masculinity in general? Point to specific instances in the story to defend your opinion.

11. Answer your chosen question and use a quote to support your assertions in your response. Your response should be at least 5 sentences in length. Label this Discussion #1.

12. Most of the action in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" takes place in the main character's home – or rather, right on the threshold, in the doorway of the kitchen, to be exact. By confining the action this way, the story is able to stage a larger question about agency: How free are we? What determines our actions? What life can we choose? What determines the life we desire? For the protagonist, the home is on one hand the place where she loses herself in daydreams fueled by popular music and film. But it's also associated with parental restrictions and the dreary life of her suburban housewife mother, a life that might await in her own future. Yet the alternative, a life literally parked on the driveway in Arnold Friend's car, is filled with threat. The possibilities for free will in such an impossible situation is a central question of the story.

13. Choose one of the following questions: 1.Take a look at Connie's actions and her state of mind over the course of the story. Does she seem to be in control of her actions? In what instances, if any, do we see her asserting control? 2.Do you think Connie is making a noble gesture of self-sacrifice at the end of the story, or is she just giving in to Arnold? 3.Take a look at the positions of Arnold, Ellie, and Connie during their conversation. When is Connie in the doorway? When does she move away from it? At what point does Arnold head toward the door? How does the staging of their actions help us understand the deeper questions about free will that underlie the story? 4.Why don't Arnold and Ellie just break into the house and take Connie by force? How would the story be different if they did? How would your understanding of the story change if what happened to Connie after she left with Arnold was included in the story?

14. Answer your chosen question and use a quote to support your assertions in your response. Your response should be at least 5 sentences in length. Label this Discussion #2.

15. Connie's family seems "normal" in the most conventional sense: a nuclear family with a stay-at- home mom and a working dad, children, and family barbecues on Sundays. But it's precisely this ordinariness that makes Oates's treatment of family life so disturbing. Most of the attention is drawn to the women of the family, whose relationships are fractured by a society that sees them as little more than sexual, marriageable, domestic objects. Without any more affirmative notion of femininity, the women – sisters and mother – are at odds with one another: they are rivals or enemies, but they can't seem to be friends. The absence of the father also eliminates the possibility for the daughters to develop a meaningful relationship with an important male figure.

16. Choose one of the following questions: 1.Describe Connie's relationship with her mother. Do you think genuine love lies beneath their bickering? Why do you think there's so much friction between the two? 2.Take a look at the other women in Connie's family – her sister, her mother's sisters. How are they and their relationships described? How do these female relationships affect Connie? 3.Where are the fathers in the story? On seeing Smooth Talk, the film adaptation of her story, Oates remarked that she would have liked to flesh out Connie's father to suggest, as "subtly" as she could, a parallel between her attraction to her father and to Arnold Friend. How would your reading of the story change if Oates rewrote the story along those lines? 4.Arnold claims that Connie's family would not have made the same sacrifice she is making for them. Do you agree? Why or why not?

17. Answer your chosen question and use a quote to support your assertions in your response. Your response should be at least 5 sentences in length. Label this Discussion #3.

18. Discuss the following questions: 1.Describe Connie's relationship with her mother. Do you think genuine love lies beneath their bickering? Why do you think there's so much friction between the two? 2.Take a look at the other women in Connie's family – her sister, her mother's sisters. How are they and their relationships described? How do these female relationships affect Connie? 3.Where are the fathers in the story? On seeing Smooth Talk, the film adaptation of her story, Oates remarked that she would have liked to flesh out Connie's father to suggest, as "subtly" as she could, a parallel between her attraction to her father and to Arnold Friend. How would your reading of the story change if Oates rewrote the story along those lines? 4.Arnold claims that Connie's family would not have made the same sacrifice she is making for them. Do you agree? Why or why not?

19. By the way... Whatever happened to the Pied Piper Charles Schmidt or um Paul.... Charles Schmid, Jr. was in the Arizona penitentiary, awaiting death for the murders of Gretchen and Wendy Fritz. He attempted to escape once by hiding inside a hollowed-out exercise horse, but was found before he succeeded. He then used a fake suicide attempt to escape, which also didn't work. In 1971, the state of Arizona temporarily abolished the death penalty, but Smitty was still in prison for fifty years, so he tried another escape, and briefly succeeded. He was spotted by a railroad worker who had gone to school with him and who noticed him because of a foolish yellow wig he'd donned as a disguise. He was returned to the prison. Schmid changed his name to Paul David Ashley and turned to writing music and essays to keep himself busy. He tried reading Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment, but was puzzled by the way Raskolnikov, who had murdered two women, was plagued by guilt and remorse.

20. By the way... Whatever happened to the Pied Piper Charles Schmidt or um Paul.... He strutted around the prison as if he were superior to other prisoners, and two of them beat him up one day. He was found stabbed and lying in a pool of blood. He had a sucking wound in the right chest that did not respond to surgery. One eye had to be removed. In all, he had some twenty stab wounds to his face and chest. On the tenth day after the stabbing, still in the hospital, Smitty began to fail. He was pronounced dead on March 30, 1975. At the request of his parents, he was buried in the prison cemetery.

21. Turn in your discussion quotes to Ms. Borchers!