Term Papers on Joyce Carol Oates

Term Paper Title	Joyce Carol Oates
# of Words	843
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.37

Joyce Carol Oates

Where is here?

English 310

Creative Writing

Short Story Analysis
August 3, 2004

     Joyce Carol Oates’s is an author in her own category.  In one of her many collections, “Where is here?” that features 35 captivating short stories.  Throughout the 193 pages, Oates discusses countless topics that the everyday world shies away from.  This collection touches on those hidden topics and disturbing subject matter such as domestic violence, fear of being alone, rape, prostitution, treachery, sex, and vulnerability.  This compilation of stories has characters with the qualities that most readers can definitely identify in their self.

    The first short story of the collection gives a graphic account of the violent and disturbing crime of rape.  The one page story is hard to read at points because of vivid descriptions.  Oates fittingly assigns the title to this narrative as Lethal.  She begins the story with, “I just want to you a little”  (Oates, 1992, p. 1).  The story seems to be the thoughts that are running through a rapist’s mind while he is attacking the victim.  “I just want to press into you a little.  I just want to penetrate you a little.  I just want to ejaculate into you a little” (Oates, 1992, p. 1).  Towards the end of the story, the attacker begins to reflect on his punishment that will result from this crime.  “You’re being cruel.  You’re being unfair…You’re provoking me.  You’re laughing at me.  You want to humiliate me…You want to castrate me.  You want to make me fight for my life, is that it?”  (Oates, 1992, p. 1).  Throughout the story the phrase, “a little” frequently appears.  “I just want to caress you a little.  I just want to kiss you a little—your lips, your throat, your breasts”  (Oates, 1992, p. 1).  The impression that the rapist gives is that since it is only “a little” he is not really harming his victim, which of course is not true.

    The topic of murder is all to frequent throughout this anthology.  The story, Turquoise, divulges the disturbing tale of a popular local girl by the name of Sherrill.  “She disappears over a Labor Day weekend, she’s missing for a month, then some boys fishing in the canal happen to discover part of an arm sticking up through the mud…An arm with no hand, a head with eyes gone and part of the jaw missing, hair stuck in the mud, what looks like a necklace grown into the chest.  Water, muck, mud, hai...

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