Innocence and Experience

It's funny to read JCO's story again as a college student. My high school English teacher for my freshman and sophomore years went to Princeton, and so, being that JCO teaches at Princeton, I was immersed in the Oates.

At 15, I read "Where are you Going, Where Have you Been" and was struck by the oh-so-common "loss of innocence" motif. I remember actually going home after reading the story and writing my own version about a girl stuck in the moment in between innocence and experience. I named her Lavender. I had her floating around the house, in an out-of-body experience, unable to attach herself to the innocence of her childhood, and equally as unable to be in the realm of experience.

I saw Connie much that way, and I suppose so did Oates, because there is a lot of "she was in the kitchen but she didn't remember it looking like that" stuff in the text.

I'm always struck by the screen door.

It's only the screen door between her and death. Between innocence and experience. Just a flimsy, translucent/transparent screen door.

Now, all this innocence talk isn't to say that Connie is some angel, but she had only dabbled in the experiential world until Arnold Friend forced her to see the harsh reality of "adult" life.

It's mostly just sad for me to see that Connie has only the option of experience in the harshest way. There's no gray area at all. She's going to become experienced, whether she's willing or unwilling.

Sad.