14Where Are you Going Where Have You Been文档格式.docx

1、 Also gone was her original attraction to the story: a group of teenagers who knew what Friend was up to. What is left is a “shallow, vain, silly, hopeful, doomed” young girl who is capable, nonetheless, of an unexpected gesture of heroism at the storys end. . . . We dont know the nature of her sacr

2、ifice, Oates says, “only that she is generous enough to make it.”Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?for Bob Dylan Folk and rock singer and songwriter （1941-）. Oates has said that the idea for this story came to her after listening to his song Its All Over Now, Baby Blue.1. Her name was Connie.

3、 She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other peoples faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadnt much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scol

4、ded Connie about it. Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think youre so pretty? she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that

5、 was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.2. Why dont you keep your room clean like your sister? Howve you got your hair fixedwhat the hell stinks? Hair spray?

6、You dont see your sister using that junk.3. Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasnt bad enoughwith her in the same buildingshe was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the tim

7、e by her mother and her mothers sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldnt do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy day-dreams. Their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he rea

8、d the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didnt bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connies mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. She makes me want to throw up sometimes, she complained t

9、o her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound at little forced, whether it was sincere or not.4. There was one good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls who were just as plain and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that he

10、r mother had no objections. The father of Connies best girl friend drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie, and when he came to pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done.5. They mu

11、st have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed who amused or interested them. Co

12、nnie had long dark blond hair that drew anyones eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home. Everything a

13、bout her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings

14、out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home Ha, ha, very funny,but high-pitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.6. Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a d

15、rive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and on its cap was a revolving figure of a grinning boy holding a hamburger aloft. One night in midsummer they ran across, breathless with daring, and right away someone lea

16、ned out a car window and invited them over, but it was just a boy from high school they didnt like. It made them feel good to be able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of parked and cruising cars to the bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they were

17、 entering a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for. They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in

18、 the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon.7. A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool, turning himself jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and turning back again, and after a while he asked Connie if she would like

19、something to eat. She said she would and so she tapped her friends arm on her way outher friend pulled her face up into a brave, droll lookand Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way. I just hate to leave her like that, Connie said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldnt be alo

20、ne for long. So they went out to his car, and on the way Connie couldnt help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in

21、 her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and tu

22、rned away, but she couldnt help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby,” and Connie turned away again without Eddie noticing anything.8. She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Co

23、kes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza. Her girl friend was there, talking with a boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled at each other and Connie said, Ho

24、w was the movie? and the girl said, You should know. They rode off with the girls father, sleepy and pleased, and Connie couldnt help but look back at the darkened shopping plaza with its big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in restaurant where c

25、ars were still circling tirelessly. She couldnt hear the music at this distance. 9. Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said, So-so.10. She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times a week, and the rest of the time Connie spent around the houseit was sum

26、mer vacationgetting in her mothers way and thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July. Connies mother

27、kept dragging her back to the daylight by finding things for her to do or saying suddenly, Whats this about the Pettinger girl?11. And Connie would say nervously, Oh, her. That dope. She always drew thick clear lines between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kind enough to believ

28、e it. Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in old bedroom slippers and complained over the telephone to one sister about the other, then the other called up and the two of them complained about the third one

29、. If Junes name was mentioned her mothers tone was approving, and if Connies name was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie, and actually Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June just because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up a pretense o

30、f exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee, they were almost friends, but something would come upsome vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their headsand their faces went hard with contempt.12. One Sunday Connie got up at elevennone of them bothered with churchand washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an aunts house and Connie said no, she wasnt interested