What was Oates' purpose in writing the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Joyce Carol Oates wrote her short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" after reading about the 1950s serial murders of Charles Schmid, a story that was profiled in Life magazine. For one thing, she was concerned with the increasing fixation on sexual themes in the youth culture of the 1960s. Then, the inspiration to write this story came to Oates with Bob Dylan's song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."

Some critics perceive Oates's narrative as an allegory for an encounter with the devil in the person of Arnold Friend, and others perceive it as criticism of contemporary youth and its obsession with sexual themes in the music to which they listen (not unlike Dylan's song).

Representative of this sex-obsessed youth, Connie is a pretty girl who knows that beauty "is everything." While her plain sister June saves money and helps to clean the house and cooks, Connie does nothing because she is occupied with her "trashy daydreams." While she is at home, Connie walks like a child and speaks with a certain cynicism; however, when she is anywhere else, she speaks with a high-pitched and nervous tone, "like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet."

Because Connie is consumed with her own beauty and sexual attraction to boys, she does not heed the dangers associated with being in her dream world where

...all the boys [who] 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.

When one of her “trashy daydreams” comes to life, so to speak, in the suspicious and sinister person of Arnold Friend, Connie is suddenly confronted with the reality of the threatening aspect of her fantasies as Arnold Friend arrives and tells her, "I'm your lover, honey." In no uncertain terms, he informs Connie of what he is going to do to her, and he threatens harm to her family if she does not go with him in his vehicle. Much like the lyrics of Bob Dylan's song, Arnold says the words "My sweet little blue-eyed girl," which are not relevant to her brown eyes, as the frightened Connie looks ahead to where she is going.

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

nouns - what do you call the person who passes the trophies to the prize giver/presenter?

The person who gives out the trophies to the winners are called award presenters. So what do u call the person who passes the trophies to the presenter? Thanks!

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.

Notes

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