It was very interesting to find the connections between the horrifying story of Charles Schmid and Joyce Oates’ short story “Where Are You going, Where Have You been?”. All three descriptive passages about Charles Schmid and the murders he committed left me with a better understanding of why Oates’ wrote such a chilling short story. After I read the articles about Schmid and reread Oates’ story, I felt more emotion towards the story because of the history I knew behind it. While even watching the movie, my stomach tightened during the scene between Arnold and Connie.
I really took a great interest in reading, watching, and listening about this entire subject. I take this kind of story serious because I believe that it is a very big issue in our society today. Girls take notice of their selves and feel the need to act older than their own age. They believe that they have to have a boy’s attention to “fit in”. It is very easy to understand because I have that age once. It is just “so exciting” to know when a boy notices how cute you look in an outfit or etc. However, these stories express the negativity of girls becoming older and men getting out of hand. First, we can take a look at the articles about Charles Schmid.
It is downright creepy to see how Charles Schmid bragged about how he killed teenage girls. When I read the first article about his trial, I was completely sucked in. I was glad to see that there were still two more postings about his story. Obviously, the character of Arnold was based upon Charles Schmid. It was interesting to find similarities between the two. In the story, it mentions how Connie thought Arnold was wearing a tar like substance on his own eyes and it seem like he was wearing a wig. Charles Schmid wore make up and dyed his hair. Schmid took much consideration into his physical appearance. He was so conscious about his height, that he put all sorts of objects in his boots to make him taller. In the story, Connie took notice of Arnold’s foot because she thought it had an awkward shape. Oates represents Charles Schmid very well as Arnold Friend.
Both the movie and the short story dig deeper into a more personal representation of the Charles Schmid murders and gives you more of an understanding of how these events actually happen. I see these literary works as acts of awareness of this subject. Bob Dylan expresses his feelings towards this topic like the story and movie do. All of these works gave me more of an emotional connection towards this original story and its topic. I feel this way because I found out more history and background information of the story, “Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?”.