Sweet Dreams Aren’t Made of This
Connie, the main character in Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where have You Been is a teen obsessed with her looks. She’s conscious about how her voice sounds to others, how she should act when she’s with her family and how she should act with anyone outside of her family. One day, her family leaves for a barbeque and leave Connie sleeping outside. Connie then dreams of Arnold Friend and his pal Ellie. In this dream, the Freudian concepts of displacement- the shifting of objects and ideas into other seemingly unrelated objects- and condensation- symbols in dreams that connect or represent two or more ideas or objects- shows that Connie doesn’t want the things her family nags her about become a reality.
Connie is very dismissive of her family, especially her mom. The first introduction we get with Connie, she is looking at herself in a mirror while her mother tells her to stop, which Connie doesn’t pay attention to. The reason her mother tells her this is because Connie has a very vain personality, which she mentions that her mother was like, as an adolescent. As a matter of fact, Connie states that her mother was a “shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.” (Oates) and that’s why she nags Connie so much, she doesn’t want Connie to be a shallow person, but to Connie, looks are everything. As a result, she often compares Connie to her sister, which Connie also doesn’t think highly of. Connie thinks that because her sister as “plain and chunky”, but the thing that makes Connie dislike her sister is that she’s always with Connie. Her father is always working, only to come home tired, read a newspaper, eat and then go to bed. Between her father- who’s never there- and her mother- who always nags her and reminds her that her sister is better, it makes sense why Connie would search for validation outside of her family, why she had “two ways of doing things” (Oates). Connie just wants attention and she feels she gets that more with her friends and flirting with boys. When it comes to love, Connie views it like it was in the radio: full of promises, hook ups and parties every night. And for the most part, its like that for Connie. Take Eddie, for example, despite Connie not knowing him, she decided to spend the day with him.
It’s implied that after her parents left for the barbeque and left Connie sleeping, Connie woke up only to till be dreaming. The night before, as well as the experiences she had with her family then become the latent content- the things that the dream day is based on- and her encounter with Arnold Friend becomes the manifest content-the things that happen in the dream day. The idea of condensation is shown as soon as Connie starts her dream with the appearance of the radio and music. To Connie, music is just as important as looks and reminded her of love and fun, so it makes sense it appears in her dream, just like it was on when she was with Eddie, as well as when she was sleeping before her parents left and it was even present when she encountered Arnold Friend. Connie’s family was also absent in her dream. To Connie, her family is restriction, hinderance and annoyance. When Arnold first visits Connie, she tells him to leave since her family might see them together, this being a hinderance and annoyance to Connie. But unlike real Connie, she cares more about her family. She ultimately decides to go with Arnold because he threatened to hurt her family, which is uncharacteristic of her since she did say that her mom made her want to “throw up” (Oates). Connie not acting like her self is, however very common in dreams, since according to Sigmund Freud’s On Dreams, he too noted that Frau E.L. was acting very friendly with him in his dream of her (Freud, 11). The idea of displacement can be seen with Arnold Friend himself. Arnold seems to know everything about Connie and in the whole story, there’s only one character that “noticed everything and knew everything” (Oates) and that’s Connie’s mother. It makes sense that Arnold is a substitute for her mother since both are characters that make Connie want to die- Arnold more than her mom.
According to Sigmund Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, a dream is a repressed wishful impulse (Freud, 28) and Connie’s wishful impulse was to take a ride, be with boys and have fun however, this took a sour turn in Connie’s dream. Suddenly, it wasn’t like the way it was in movies or the way the songs promised. Not only that, but it was her vanity that attracted Arnold to her, the very thing that her mother would nag her about. Connie also stayed alone in her house the entire time, which was what she wanted- to be free from her family, but later grew to regret. It was because she was alone that Arnold Friend decided to visit her and harass her into going on a ride with him.
Connie’s dream of Arnold Friend gave insight of her fear of her being wrong about who she is as a person. She feared that her mother was right about her vanity not being everything that represented a person and Arnold Friend was a representation of that- originally looking like any other guy, only for it to be a façade.
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