'Lightning in Perhentian Island, Terengganu, Malaysia' by Fadzly @ flickr

Recently, in the “Intro to Literature” course I’m taking, we had a discussion of Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”  It’s a tale of a teenage girl, Connie, who is attractive, promiscuous, and at odds with her mother over vanity.  In the end, this all plays out when the creepy Arnold Friend arrives at her house, trying to coax her into leaving with him while her family is away.  Connie, not willing to leave, takes refuge in her house where nothing separates her from Arnold but a flimsy screen door, yet Arnold refuses to make a move – unless, that is, she tries to pick up the phone.  He does, however, threaten violence upon her whole family if she doesn’t leave with him before they return.

(Note: When I have a chance, I will back-fill this with proper citations; this is a fairly rich story and to not provide easy access to the material I used in performing this analysis would be a disservice; however, I’m not sitting in front of most of my materials and any reasonable keyword search will return a plethora of supporting results, so I’m comfortable in my assertion my work is sufficiently original and the source material sufficiently ambiguous that are no immediate ethical concerns.)

At first blush this story was somewhat entertaining, with themes of you might find anywhere in pop-horror fiction.  What was intriguing, however, was that throughout the entire ordeal between Connie and Arnold, he insisted that he would keep his promise, a promise to not enter the house unless she tries to use the phone.  On the face of things, this seems to be at odds with Arnold’s intentions; if he is, indeed, willing to harm or kill her family, and essentially take Connie by force, what difference would it make if he crossed the threshold into her domain to do as such?  My thoughts went to various European traditions regarding demons and spirits, where it has been suggested that certain entities cannot enter your house without your permission, but that many of these entities were cunning and able to trick their would-be victims through the use various mechanisms, such as promising not to enter unless the victim performs some specific action – say, for instance, picking up a phone (though, in point of fact, these beliefs tend to predate the existence of the telephone by decades if not centuries).  This seemed to be supported by Oates’ description of Arnold, his complexion, the sunken, unnaturally pale eyes, sickly demeanor, boots being at odd angles and not seeming to be properly filled by feet, etc.

Our instructor had a somewhat different take on the story, though, and warned against following a supernatural path for risk of trivializing the work as purely an entertaining work of “out-there fantasy” or horror.  This seems a reasonable point to make, but my interest in the demon connection wasn’t related in any way to modern sensibilities regarding the paranormal/supernatural and entertainment; rather, I look at these things in the sense of their cultural and societal heritage.  As a modern example, I offer Pele – the Hawaiian Goddess of the Volcano.  Sure, she’d make for a great character to use in a colorful story for entertainment purposes, but should you visit Hawaii (the Big Island in particular), you’ll find that the residents take her quite seriously.  The thing to keep in mind here is that Pele is still alive in Hawaiian culture, whereas a lot of the European and Asian legends have crossed over into the realm of the “dead metaphor.”  It’s important to understand that my intent was to examine these paranormal phenomena from the context in which they were still alive, which paints them on an entirely different canvas than it does if examined from popular/modern culture.

So, to get some more color on the subject, I did a little research.  The obvious starting point seemed to be Joyce Carol Oates herself, to see if her cultural background might give us some clues.  I had a strong suspicion she may have been Irish, which is rich with colorful legends and myths, but the first results returned stopped after referring to her as an “American author.”  Sorry, not much in American culture is going to support my theories.  The second round of results was far more enlightening, though.  We know, for fact, that a Bob Dylan song, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” was a key piece of inspiration for this story, but what I didn’t know was that she had also based this story on the real-life story of serial killer Charles Schmid and that she was influenced by the centuries-old folk theme of “Death and the Maiden.”

To sum up “Death and the Maiden,” stories of this theme date back at least to the 1500′s, if not further, and have also developed in several other arts – dance, painting, song, etc.  The gist of these stories is that a girl, typically younger, vain, and frequently of higher social standing, is sought out by Death (the figure, that is; a.k.a. the Grim Reaper), who persuades the girl, through various means, to go with him.  The parallels between this theme and my interpretation of Oates’ Arnold character as a demon seem to be self-supportive, and it’s certainly not out of line for an author to use a character as a metaphor for something else (ie: Arnold as a metaphor for death).  It also drew my attention to the fact that, while the context leading up to this encounter is overtly sexualized, we don’t see anything which suggests this theme is persistent in Arnold’s motives, another detail possibly supporting the link between Arnold and the figure of Death.

This left us with the dangling references to Charles Schmid, though.  Now, as I’ve just mentioned, it’s not uncommon for an author to use a character as a metaphor for a particular subject or theme, nor is it uncommon to see an author base a character on a distillation of real events.  But I had a niggling feeling that this may not be what had happened in the case of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”  And then it occurred to me: What if Oates’ was not looking at Arnold as a metaphor for death, but rather had based him on Charles Schmid, whom she had characterized as Death incarnate?  Surely this would reconcile the ancient traditions of demons and death with their modern perceptions, allowing for the representation of Arnold as being inhuman without necessitating the introduction of elements that would, today, be interpreted as “out-there fantasy” or purely for horrific entertainment.  (Also an intellectually intriguing concept – moving the metaphor out of the story, into the real world, and then bringing that “new reality” into the story, effectively abstracting the metaphor away.  But I digress…)

Thus, I have concluded that both my instructor’s and my own opinions are not only correct, but reconcilable: Indeed, Arnold wasn’t a demon, just a really creepy, menacing guy; but that fact, in and of itself, can make him a demon.  As well as making for one hell of an interesting story…

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