Irrevocable Changes Through Oates and Erdrich

Throughout life people go through many changes, some which affect them more greatly than others. In the short stories, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", by Joyce Carol Oates, and "The Red Convertible", by Louise Erdrich, the characters of Connie and Henry are dynamic in that they go undergo changes that affect their lives so irrevocably that they will never again be the same. A catalyst induces the changes in both characters and neither change has a positive affect on the character's life.

Prior to the changes, both characters are more naive and innocent about the world around them. During the introduction of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", Connie is portrayed as "fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors." She also fights with her mother constantly and has begun to fool around with boys. Connie is a normal American girl on the brink of her adolescence. During the introduction of "The Red Convertible", Henry is also portrayed as naive and innocent. He buys a car with his brother, Lyman, and they go on a road-trip that lasts the entire summer. During the end of the road trip, when they are with Susy, a girl with whom they had been staying in Alaska after picking her up somewhere in the Midwest and driving her all the way home, Susy lets her long hair out and Henry puts her on his shoulders and spins her around, saying, "I always wondered what it was like to have long hair." Clearly, Henry is fun loving, carefree and spontaneous.

In both stories there is the presence of a catalyst, which induces the negative changes in the characters. In "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" the catalyst is the character of Arnold Friend, who drives his golden jalopy to Connie’s house one Sunday when her parents are not home to try and convince her to come for a ride with him. The character of Arnold Friend represents the "demonic lover", in that he has supernatural powers that make him irresistible to Connie. He is demonic in that he possesses the telepathic ability to view the activities of her family members at the barbeque they were attending at her aunt ’s house, along with the fact that his foot doesn’t fit properly into his boot, making it appear stuffed, which represents the cloven foot of the devil. For Henry, in "The Red Convertible", the catalyst is the Vietnam War. After Henry and Lyman come home from Alaska, Henry is called upon to serve in the Army, for which he had previously "signed up". Before long he is stationed in Vietnam where he soon becomes a Prisoner of War.

As a result of the change that was induced by the catalyst, both Connie and Henry’s lives are negatively and irrevocably affected. For Connie, the change starts to occur while Arnold Friend is outside, seemingly trying to convince her to come for a ride with him. At one point she attempts to seek refuge in the kitchen, a room in the house that she and her family had occupied for three years, but it begins to be unrecognizable to her. "The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before, some room she had run inside but which wasn’t good enough." The change intensifies during the climax of the story, when Connie runs back into the house after speaking again with Arnold Friend, hitting her leg on the table, with a roaring in her ear that amplifies as she picks up the telephone for help but can only scream into the receiver. Like the kitchen, the telephone, a device she has used for much of her life, has become unrecognizable to her. At the resolution of the story, when she walks outside to go with Arnold Friend, she is gazing in awe upon all this land that she had never seen before now that she had changed, because when she had looked upon it before she was naive and innocent, two of the qualities she used to possess that Arnold Friend, the "demonic lover", had taken away. In "The Red Convertible", after being a Prisoner of War and coming back home, Henry ’s entire personality changes. He has become quiet, barely stringing even six words together, and he never seems to sit still. He seems to occupy himself solely by sitting in front of the television, which is where he was when he once bit all the way through his lip without even noticing. This change is so negative and disturbing to his family that they consider admitting him to a mental health facility, but as Native Americans living on a reservation, they did not trust the mental health providers, his mother stating, "they just give them drugs." During the end of the story, at the bank of the Red River, even when it seems to his brother Lyman that Henry is acting like his old self again, laughing and playing about, he jumps into the river and kills himself, which proves that the change her underwent was irrevocable.

Sometimes changes can affect one so greatly that they will never be the same again. This is true of the dynamic characters, Connie and Henry, in the short stories, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" and "The Red Convertible." During the introduction of these stories, both characters were more naive and innocent and, better off as a whole than they were after the change occurred, which had been induced by the catalysts of Arnold Friend and the Vietnam War. These literary works seem to reflect a universal truth about real life and provide a means for their audience to relate, as most people also go through life-changing events, which affect them so irrevocably that their lives will indeed never be the same again.