Author's Voice

Carol Joyce Oates is a praised author capable of writing stories that leave readers on the edge of their seat thinking about what happens next. Even as the story comes to a close, her words linger and her readers continue to ponder what they just experienced. Her stories are an experience. Reading her work is not going from one plot point to the next, but delving deep into her words and understanding the world she has created on a deeper level.
One of the most notable examples of her work is Where are you going, Where have you been?. This thriller descends quickly from a fun-loving teenager enjoying her summer to what likely results in a murder. The reader empathizes with Connie and her situation.
To contrast this downward spiral of a plot, Carol Joyce Oates' Heat is one of the darkest ways to approach a child's murder. The unnamed narrator looks back on her past with two twins in her hometown. She describes their young friendship, but quickly shifts the story to discuss the murder of these two girls and their funeral. She looks back on her childhood and how she thought about the events surrounding her at the time.
These two stories focus on the point of view of a young girl. They are put into unimaginable situations and their reactions are explored. Joyce Carol Oates likely draws from experience and uses her own childhood to imagine how a young girl would process such horrid information. These young girls present their emotions to the reader while they go through something that's impossible to compare. Oates has an understanding of the human experience and writes these characters in a way that is relatable despite their circumstances being so far from normal.
Despite their similar structure, Heat focuses on how a young girl dealt with understanding death and realizing that the world is not as happy and carefree as a child might like to believe. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? surrounds a girl being tested against a horrible event and must react to a life or death situation. Both characters must learn to confront death, but one must do it to survive and the other must learn to survive with it's burden.
The narrator in Heat tells the story by looking back on her past. The events have happened long ago, but they still bother her. She creates her own idea of what happened during her friends' murder. She imagines the details of the worst event that's happened to her all the way down to the way he smelled. She deals with death by attempting to understand it.
These stories have a similar beginning. Oates' puts young girls in a situation they shouldn't be forced to deal with. She analyzes their reactions and puts them on display for the reader. The differences come in the approach and the tone she creates around the story.

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