The Significance and Influence of Setting in Literature

I picked the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” because I really saw the significance of the setting and how it could have affected the story if it differed. The Story is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Connie. It starts in summer and describes how she spends her summer. She spends most of her time hanging around the house, going out with friends, and meeting with boys. She goes on a date with a boy named Eddie. She later meets a boy named Arnold in a nice gold car and gets creeped out about him. But, she eventually ends up getting in the car with him and going for a ride.

Joyce Carol Oates describes an American Youth Culture and a new suburban. There is also a trend in changing beliefs about sexuality and sex. There are many conventional standards. You also see Arnold’s predation as he is trying to get with a girl that is way younger than him. The difference is that in that setting it was normal as she simply gets into the car with him and they take off. As of nowadays if an older man tried to have a relationship with a younger woman people would be disgusted and call the police.

The absence of sort of explicit depiction of the setting serves to universalize the story’s themes, which unquestionably propose that Connie’s absence of personality really is a heritage of kind of thinking. Such a harmless setting essentially is unintelligible with the brutality proposed in the story, and the differentiation serves to increase the pursuer's uneasiness in a truly significant manner. Connie’s house is described as an asbestos ranch house because of the newness and style.

References to famous music and slang date the occasion in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You been?” to a similar period when Oates composed the story in the mid-1960s, which is genuinely noteworthy. Oates draws in essentially few subtleties of the town, which sort of is fundamentally intended to in every way that matters be a run of the mill rural scene that incorporates in every way that matters natural sights in reality, for example, a strip mall and drive-in eatery in an inconspicuous way. This setting certainly is somewhat additionally portrayed in the reference to the novelty and style of the three-year-old “asbestos farmhouse” Connie lives in. Such a harmless setting generally is unintelligible with the brutality in every practical sense recommended in the story, and the difference serves to increase the persuer;s uneasiness, genuinely in opposition to mainstream thinking. The absence of in every practical sense explicit portrayal of the setting serves to univerlize the story’s topics, which propose that Connie’s absence of personality, for the most part, is an inheritance of extremely current rural culture in a huge way. Despite the facts that the genuine area of the story, for the most part, is unimportant, the reference to the radio show connie tunes in to, “XYZ Sunday Jamboree,” may by and large be a reference to radio state WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan, the territory where in Oates actually inhabited the time the story by and large was composed, so references to mainstream music and slange date the occasion in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You been?” to a similar period hen Oates composed the story in the mid-1960s, or so they fundamentally thought. 

In conclusion, the significance of setting in the short story is both specific and vague together. The time and spot stay questionable. Some people have put the story in the late 1950s and mid 1960s while the stories’ area is unknown but seemed to be in some a suburban area. This gives the story a universal relevance.