Where Is Here?
By:Joyce Carol Oates
Vocabulary
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Stealthily-slowly so as to avoid notice
Exasperation-annoyance, frustration
Impulsively-spontaneously
Fastidious-careful; meticulous
Cavernous-cavelike; vast
About The Author
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Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1983 in Lockport, New York.
○ She grew up without many books, but loved storytelling and drawing
picture stories.
Her Elementary school was a one room schoolhouse.
○ at 14 she received a typewriter as a gift and began typing eagerly.
In college, Oates would write one novel on one side of the paper, and a
different novel on the other side, then throw it away!
○ She published her first book at the age of 25.
In what is called the Gothic Family Tree for the writers who use the gothic
style, Oates is considered to be the best writer in the Modern Gothic tree
branch.
Gothic Literature
● Joyce Carol Oates look back at people like Edgar Allen
Poe as the founding voice of this American Gothic
Tradition.
○ She uses his style and his themes and plots in her
stories.
● You can find examples of gothic literature in writings
such as poetry, drama, novels, and short stories.
Gothic Literature Elements
● Poe also set the groundwork for style and different
themes
● The elements he used in his branch are:
○ A bleak or remote setting;often grand, like a castle or
mansion.
○ Gloomy atmosphere; sense of impending room.
○ Characters in physical or psychological torment.
○ Horrific or violent incidents, and supernatural
elements.
Poe vs. Oates
● While Poe stayed with the more traditional and
American themes, Oates modernized her.
● Instead of her settings being in a castle, she
modernized them into being in a normal home.
● Her story keeps most of the elements the same, it has
a normal to gloomy atmosphere, with definite
supernatural elements with the stranger that showed
up giving the story an eerie and mysterious feeling.
Analysis
“Where Is Here” is a short story that tells the journey of an old man who
appears on the front porch of a family of 4. The stranger knocks and a man
opens the door, the father. He asks what the stranger needs and the stranger
explains that the house once belonged to his parents and that he grew up there.
He asks to walk around the yard and see how the place has changed and ends
up looking outside and inside the house. As he walks in each room his face
lights up at how things have changed but mostly stayed the same. The man is
allowed to look everywhere but chooses not to go into the master bedroom. He
is also denied the chance to look in the basement and is eventually forced to
leave. At that point he walked out the door, down the street, and disappeared in
the fog.