Does Arnold Friend enter Connie’s life from the real world? Is the story grounded entirely in reality?

THE STORY (506-517) (there are some analysis and review after)

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You have the option to watch this film. It is not a requirement.

To view the movie:

https://ok.ru/video/336443411192

Documented Paper on “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

OVERVIEW

Assignment: Select one of the topics listed below. Review Oates’s story and examine the casebook section of the text. Extend your
research beyond the casebook to include additional source material.

TOPICS
The function of Connie’s antagonist at this crossroads in her life: Arnold Friend as. (to my writer: use the best topic for you)

1. sexual predator
2. demonic adversary
3. Death personified
4. imaginary dream-figure
********Argue a single interpretation; do not combine.*******
REQUIREMENTS

1. At least five citations in MLA style:

a. quotations and paraphrases from primary sources: the story itself (required) and other material by Oates (optional), such as the article “When Characters from the Page Are Made Flesh on the Screen”

b. quotations or paraphrases from secondary sources: interpretations of the story by scholars and critics

2. Works Cited page, listing at least one secondary source

EVALUATION CRITERIA

1. Research and preparation

2. Content: understanding of the story, validity of ideas, soundness of arguments

3. Organization: introduction ending with thesis, detailed analysis, conclusion

4. Documentation

a. Adequacy of supporting evidence; appropriateness of quotations and paraphrases

b. Presentation of quotations and paraphrases in correct MLA format

c. Works Cited: format and arrangement of entries

5. Style

6. Grammar/mechanics
Font: 14-point Times New Roman
Also required is a one-inch margin on every side. DOUBLE-SPACE!

SUPPLEMENT 1
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” (Oates, pp. 506-17)

COMING OF AGE: THE PATTERN

In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates illustrates the three-part plot pattern associated with the initiation or coming-of-age theme. A young protagonist (child or adolescent) embarks on a metaphorical journey from innocence to experience.

The domestic setting prior to the process:

The main character’s familiar world, the world of home, is relatively secure though already fraught with conflict. Note Connie’s difficicult relationships:

With mother
With father
With sister

Her eagerness to get away results in temporary separations. These forays into the world of the “older kids” (shopping plaza, movies) intensify Connie’s hunger for experience, though they always end with a return home. The drive-in restaurant “where the older kids hung out” is a “sacred” place, with the rock music of the Sixties “always in the background like music at a church service” (par. 6). Ultimately, these temporary separations lead Connie to her first encounter with Arnold Friend (par. 7).

At age fifteen, Connie is at a crossroads. Almost immediately Oates establishes her duality, her ambivalence towards the journey she is about to begin (5).

Separation:

In the first stage of the pattern, the main character passes from safety and light to danger, and darkness. In a work of fantasy, this means entrance into a “region of supernatural wonder” — under the earth or beneath the sea, above the sky, etc., but most often a forest. In a realistic story, any frightening setting will suffice, whether urban or rural. [See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.]

Connie’s separation: One Sunday, her parents leave her alone. In the family’s absence, Arnold enters her life — as if to replace them like a lover or endanger her like a predator? When he invites her to go for a ride, Connie asks, “Where’re we going?” (54) She will not yet open and go past her screen door, but her journey is about to begin.

Initiation:

Having crossed the threshold into the dark, the protagonist struggles against the forces of experience, usually embodied by a powerful, monstrous antagonist — the wolf or witch of the fairy tale, for example, or, in a realistic work, the criminal. If the main character is near adulthood, initiation may also include rescuing or being rescued by a member of the opposite sex.

Connie’s initiation is the second encounter with Arnold Friend, a mysterious, powerful figure whose function is to introduce her to the terrors and sorrows of the adult world. Their “ride” together is, remember, metaphorical and psychological. This is the encounter we witness, the one that starts with paragraph 12 and plays itself out in their subsequent dialogue until the end. The actual “adventure” begins only as the story concludes, and it fades fast to an ill-defined horizon. Whatever the nature of the literal “ride” in the gold jalopy, after it Connie will never again be the child she once was. She will never recover her innocence. No one ever does: That is the point of every coming-of-age tale.

Return:

The initiation typically ends in triumph. The monster fails, and the protagonist, if still a child, returns home after the victory to reconcile with parents and
await the proper time for permanent departure. He or she has been made ready for future battle against the world’s dangers. On the other hand, the main character who has grown to maturity returns to ordinary life but not to the original family. Instead, this older protagonist moves forward to the traditional happy ending: marriage to the partner involved in the rescue and presumably the birth of children. The cycle begins anew.

For Connie, the normative pattern is broken: no reconciliation with parents, no rescue followed by marriage. Does Oates leave the return stage undefined but implicitly dark to suit the rather jaded, cynical Sixties? Is she suggesting that it is no longer possible to tell stories in which characters “live happily ever after”?

THE ANTAGONIST

Arnold’s role as antagonist is certain, but his identity and the nature of the whole experience remain open to speculation.

(1) Sexual predator

Does Arnold Friend enter Connie’s life from the real world? Is the story grounded entirely in reality?

Oates has acknowledged the influence of a series of magazine articles about a serial killer who terrorized Arizona in the years just prior to her story’s publication: Charles Schmid, the “Pied Piper of Tucson.” (See the author’s article, “When Characters from the Page Are Made Flesh on the Screen,” in the Oates Casebook section of the text.) Elements of Arnold’s appearance and behavior can be traced to Scnmid, who stalked and preyed on adolescent girls.

For example, Connie suspects that Arnold (like Schmid) is disguised. He pretends to be a teenager when he is in fact much older (par. 79 ff.), wears ill-fitting boots that cause him to stumble (105, 118, 124), may have used some sort of makeup that gives his face a masklike appearance. And could his hair be a wig? (16, 84, 94, 110)

As Friend becomes increasingly menacing, Connie’s initial attraction turns to uneasiness, then fear. He begins a seduction, then openly threatens. She finally surrenders and agrees to follow him, partly because she is afraid for her family and will sacrifice herself for them (131, 133, 158), but perhaps also because at some level her desire for experience is so intense that she is willing to pay any price for it. In any case, Connie moves toward a violent outcome, probably rape (104) and even death.

Whatever the realistic elements in Oates’s plot and characterizations, Arnold is certainly strange: he may be a manipulative criminal who also happens to be psychic, rattling off the names of Connie’s friends, indulging in a trancelike vision of the aunt’s faraway barbecue (48, 64, 96 ff.). Or he may simply (and shrewdly) give the appearance of being psychic.

(2) Folktale monster

Realism and fantasy converge in “Where Are You Going. . . .” Even if we decide the story is wholly realistic, it often parallels fantasy — especially fairy tales — in its plot development and characterizations, particularly in the depiction of Arnold Friend.

I refer, of course, to the old folktales of medieval origin, transmitted by word of mouth by European peasants as they tilled the soil or gathered in the taverms. Centuries would pass before scholars (like the Brothers Grimm in Germany) would collect these stories and publish them for family entertainment, occasionally toning down the sex and violence as children became the primary audience.

Like the typical folktale heroine, Connie is on the brink of adulthood and clearly ambivalent about the transition (par. 5).
Before separation: home:

Consider Connie’s conflict with her mother. Granted, the limited omniscient perspective bars us from the mother’s mind. But for Connie, the relationship centers on rivalry, on her mother’s envy of Connie’s youthful sexuality. And what is the mother’s accusation, the thing that most disturbs her about her daughter? Connie is always “craning her neck to glance into mirrors. Her mother, . . . who hadn’t much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. ‘Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you’re so pretty?'” (par. 1) The jealous mother obsessed with mirrors: “Snow White,” of course.

In many of the female-dominated medieval folktales, the father is apathetic, alienated from the family, perhaps absent altogether. Such is the case here as well. As for Connie’s sibling rivalry with June, I need not remind you of “Cinderella.”

Preliminary and temporary separations:

In the folktale, removal from home and banishment to the forest may be voluntary (“Little Red Riding Hood”) or forcible (“Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretel”). There are elements of both in Oates’s story. Connie eagerly escapes from home to the local teen hangouts, but she also feels driven by what she perceives as her mother’s hostility and her father’s indifference. Whatever its superficial attractions, the “sacred” drive-in diner is, ironically, “fly-infested,” a rather ominous “haven” where she first meets Arnold, who promises/threatens, “Gonna get you, baby” (6-7).

Separation: exile into the woods:

As her parents leave for the barbecue and Connie lies alone, half dozing in the sunlight, the home environment is transformed, in a sense, into the archetypal forest (12); now Arnold appears at the appointed time for her to cross the threshold (47). Compare Sleeping Beauty’s “abandonmennt” and sleep. When the usually overprotective king and queen suddenly leave their daughter alone, she climbs winding stairs to find an old woman at a spinning wheel. The princess pricks her finger and bleeds. She enters her long sleep as trees rise up around her father’s castle.

Initiation: encounter with the monster:

In myth and folktale — as well as in every child’s worst nightmare — the all-consuming, always hungry creature (whether giant, ogre, witch, wolf, dragon), embodies the conscious or subconscious anxieties children harbor about growing up. Is loss of innocence loss of self? Does it threaten loss of identity? Will the world of experience swallow us whole?

Far from being the princely savior of Connie’s “trashy daydreams,” Arnold exbibits distinctly wolflike attributes (46, 84), “the jaw and chin and cheeks slightly darkened because he hadn’t shaved . . ., and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up . . . .” Connie is no less vulnerable behind the screen door of her family’s home than the hapless Little Pigs of the old tale: “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now — inside your daddy’s house — is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time” (152). He’ll huff and he’ll puff, in other words.

No return:

Unlike the folktale heroines, Connie is not triumphant in the end. She is not the child who destroys the monster to move back to her familiar surroundings, like Gretel. She is not freed from the wolf’s belly to scamper back across the woods to her mother, like the German version of Red Riding Hood. Nor does she go forward, now grown to womanhood, to a healthy, mature relationship with her prince, like Snow White or Cinderella, Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty. No, Connie either remains in a sort of psychological limbo, following Friend hypnotically as if he were a Pied Piper, or she is swallowed whole by the darkness, like the French Red Riding Hood. Somerimes, Oates seems to say, there is no release from the belly of the wolf.

(3) Devil: “Don’t you know who I am?”

Oates may expect the reader to accept the possibility of magical or unearthly intervention in the real world. Does Arnold enter Connie’s life not as a rapist/murderer but as an adversary with supernatural powers (48-64, 96 ff.)? In fact, is Friend a demon or the devil himself? If Oates is indeed suggesting that he is the devil, then she presupposes the reader’s acceptance of the existence of heaven and hell and God and Satan. In the earthly struggle between the powers of light and darkness, might a demonic presence be lurking among us?

Note the frequency of Connie’s and Arnold’s curses invoking hell; Connie’s “Christ” (par. 15) and Arnold’s “Christ! which sounded forced” (110); the odd descriiption of his eyes (55); the boots that do not fit: does he have cloven hooves instead of feet?

Nor should we overlook the prevalence of flies in the restaurant, at the barbecue (12), and around the screen door that leads from the safety of Connie’s home to the mysterious world beyond (27). Beelzebub, a name sometimes used for the devil, means “Lord of the Flies.”

The day “set aside” for Connie’s ride is Sunday (12, 47), when she and her family reject the sacramental rituals of church (12), and when the parents choose the barbecue or flaming bonfire instead (98, 158).

Arnold claims to know everyone (64). At their first encounter (7), he marks the space around Connie with an X (77): a perversion of the Cross? He has chosen her (47-52, 122). He announces that he will possess her, body and soul: “I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me” (104, cf. 119-20, 155).

Most significant is Friend’s pledge not to go in after Connie; she must choose to invite him in and forsake the home she now sees (ironically) as her sanctuary (113, 127): “I ain’t made plans for coming in that house where I don’t belong but just for you to come out to me, the way you should. Don’t you know who I am?” (127). Christian doctrine has it that Satan can do no more than tempt,lure, seduce. The human spirit must exercise free will either to follow or resist.

(4) Death: “Don’t you know who I am?”

That, of course, is the question. Who is this “friend” who has come for Connie? Does he represent Death itself, come to snatch her away from earthly vanity, from her mirrors and “trashy daydreams”? Note Oates’s reference to her original title “Death and the Maiden,” to various medieval engravings on that theme, and to her allegorical intent. [In the casebook section of the text, read carefully the beginning of the article “When Characters from the Page Are Made Flesh on the Screen,” and try a Google image search of those engravings.]

(5) Dream

Finally, does Arnold appear in the real world at all, whether as killer, demon, or death personfied? Since Connie seems to be in a half-waking state as she dries her hair in the sun (12), she may, in fact, fall asleep. An alternative to the archetypal wilderness as the scene for separation and initiation is a “profound dream state” (Campbell). Is Arnold, then, a sinister figment of Connie’s subconscious, the
central figure in a terrifying dreamscape?

Compare Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who goes to sleep outdoors in the sun and falls “down the rabbit-hole” to her initiation in a nightmarish Wonderland (complete with hallucinogenic mushroom and a hookah-puffing caterpillar).

Consider, too, Oates’s dedication to Bob Dylan and her place among the Boomers of the Sixties: hallucinatory experience would hardly have been an unlikely plot device when she wrote the story in 1966.

Paragraphs prior to 12 make it clear that Connie (to her mother’s dismay) has an active imagination and a tendency to daydream (3, 10, 11).

Significantly, neither Eddie nor anyone else sees Arnold Friend near the drive-in diner (7). Connie is alone in the house, of course, when he makes his second appearance. No one but Connie ever sees Arnold. She conjures him up in a dream; he does not exist outside herself.

This hypothesis does not invalidate other notions of Arnold’s identity. Connie patterns him after figures who haunt her subconscious — the sexual predators her mother would have warned her about, the folktale beasts of her childhood stories, the devil, or death itself.

Friend thus becomes a projection of Connie’s subconscious, the product of her confusion and ambivalence at this crucial juncture. She is locked in a struggle with herself. Where has she been, and where is she going?

In part, Connie is a woman who knows that she must leave her childhood behind, that her home is “nothing but a cardboard box” all too easily blown away, and that her innocence has all but vanished: “The place where you came from ain’t there anymore” (152). The woman in Connie “know[s] that and always did know it,” as Arnold reminds her.

At the same time, however, Connie is a child afraid of adulthood, even terrified of separation from home and family (123, 144, 151). She dreams up a wolflike and darkly seductive adversary because the child within her is not ready to accept a savior/bridegroom.

While Connie-as-woman is eager to break the family ties, the wolflike traits may predominate in the Arnold figure because she may feel some guilt, may need some justification. Therefore, she creates this monster who threatens not only her own well-being but, more importantly, her family’s: she must go with Arnold to keep them safe; the self-sacrifice makes her blameless.

At the end of the dream, Connie visibly divides into two halves (160): the child crouches passively and watches the woman follow Arnold Friend.

The story’s conclusion remains problematic: has the dark fantasy ended? Is Connie about to waken from this ultimate “trashy dayfream” to find the imaginary Arnold gone? What now?

If the frightened child in Connie prevails, the dream may be cautionary, a warning. She might wake to find herself still restless but relieved to be safe in her “daddy’s house.” She might, then, reunite with her family (like Gretel or the German Red Riding Hood) until the time for the real separation arrives.

On the other hand, if the restless woman in Connie prevails, the dream may function as a release. She might awaken and leave home and parents, perhaps justifying her escape as a way to save the family from additional conflict and herself from an unhealthy and prolonged childhood: “nobody else gets hurt” (133).

Either way, the end of the story suggests that even if the dream gives Connie the courage to leave, the outcome will not be the traditional happy ending: what awaits Connie (even if not rape or death) is a darkly uncertain future (160).

SUPPLEMENT 2
Documented Paper on “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

FINDING LITERARY CRITICISM

From the MDC home page (“Academics” menu at top), go to the “Libraries” site.

1. To search the MDC online catalog for books:

Above the Quick Links, you will see “Search the Library Catalog”: enter our author’s full name or the title of her story. Remember, you want books ABOUT Oates, not BY her.

Recommended books:

Critical biographies of Joyce Carol Oates

Full-length books of criticism on Oates’s works

Collections of critical essays on Oates’s works

Collections of essays specifically on “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

Critical editions of the story (casebooks): these, too, are collections of essays on the story, but they include the story itself as well.

2. To search academic databases or the Internet for critical articles in journals:

Again, enter the Libraries site from the College home page. Under the search box, click on Databases; then select Subject, then Literature. Now choose a database. Recommended: JSTOR, Literary Reference Center Plus (EBSCO), Literature Resources from Gale.

This step may require log-in: enter your MDC i.d.; your PIN is the last four digits of the same number.

IMPORTANT: Finding articles via the databases is always preferable to using a search engine (like Google). You must refer to scholarly, authoritatative, professional sources. Google will not always yield the best sources, the experts in the field; in fact, you may end up with some questionable or entirely unacceptable ones. (See No. 3 below.) In any case, if you do resort to a search engine for whatever reason, look for URLs ending in “.edu” rather than “.com.”
Google Scholar, by the way, does provide safe and valuable research materials. but all too often you must pay to access them.

Scan each article quickly at first to determine its relevance to your topic. Later you wil read it carefully and take notes from it. Eventually you will cite it in your paper (by quoting pr paraphrasung), and you will include it among your Works Cited
.

3. Unacceptable sources: avoid the following:

SparkNotes, CliffsNotes, Shmoop, GradeSaver, and other “study guides”

Wikipedia

Blogs, social media, chat groups, etc.

Sites offering papers ready to download or buy.

DRAFTING AND DOCUMENTING:
ORGANIZING THE PAPER

Structure your essay in three sections:

Introduction with thesis (one paragraph without quotations from secondary sources)

Development (three to six paragraphs)

Conclusion (one paragraph without quotations)

In the development section you will provide evidence for the validity and strength of your thesis, and you will quote from Oates’s story and from secondary sources to bolster your interpretation.

DRAFTING AND DOCUMENTING: CITING REFERENCES

The Modern Language Association has established specific formats for brief quotations, long quotations, and paraphrases. These are not mere suggestions or recommendations; they are rules to be followed to the letter.

1. BRIEF QUOTATION (1-4 lines):

Integrate the quoted passage into your text without indenting.

Place quotation marks immediately before and after the quotation.

Reproduce the passage accurately. Make no changes: keep the original wording.

Identify the source:

(a) Mention the name of the author in your introduction to the quotation (called a signal phrase); provide the page number, in parentheses, after the quotation
—or—

(b) Supply both the author’s name and the page number in a parenthetical citation following the quotation.

Place the final period of the quotation immediately after the parenthetical note.

2. LONG QUOTATION (5 lines or more):

Indent every line of the quoted passage one inch from the left margin (block form). Do NOT place quotation marks around the quotation.

Reproduce the passage accurately. Make no changes: keep the original wording.

Identify the source:

(a) Mention the name of the author in a signal phrase introducing the quotation; provide the page number, in parentheses, immediately after the quotation.

—or—

(b) Supply both the author’s name and the page number in a parenthetical citation following the quotation.

Place the final period of the quotation before the parenthetical reference.

3. PARAPHRASE:
Integrate the paraphrased passage into your text without indenting.

Do not place quotation marks around the paraphrase.

Explain the author’s idea in words and sentence patterns that are entirely your own. Do NOT keep the original wording.

Identify the source: to pinpoint the beginning of the paraphrase, introduce it with the author’s name in a signal phrase; provide the page number, in parentheses, immediately after the paraphrase.

Place the final period immediately after the parenthetical note.

IMPORTANT: although the signal phrase is optional with any quotation (short or long), it is always required by the paraphrase.

EXAMPLES:

BRIEF QUOTATION from the primary source “Where Are You Going . . .” (four lines or fewer):

Quote the short passage without making any changes, surround it with quotation marks, and cite author and page in parentheses:

Perhaps Arnold is the central figure in a recurring dream. Connie first sees him near the fly-ridden drive-in “without Eddie noticing anything” (Oates 507). Days later he drives up to her house only after her family have left her alone.

Second option: signal phrase:

Introduce the brief quotation with the author’s name; omit the name from the citation at the end:

Perhaps Arnold is the central figure in a recurring dream. Oates makes a point of telling us that he first appears to Connie
near the fly-ridden drive-in “without Eddie noticing anything” (507).

LONG QUOTATION from the story (five lines or more):

Introduce the quotation; give it context for your reader; then indent, quote accurately without quotation marks, and cite author and page:

Perhaps Arnold is the central figure in a recurring dream. When Connie first sees him near the fly-ridden drive-in, no one else
in the parking lot is aware of his presence:

. . . just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn’t help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby,” and Connie turned away again without
Eddie noticing anything. (Oates 507)

Remember, every line of the long quotation must be indented one inch from the left margin.

Second option: signal phrase:

Include the author’s name in your introduction to the long quote; then omit the name from the parenthetical citation:

Oates implies that Arnold may be the central figure in a recurring dream. When Connie first sees him near the fly-ridden drive-in, no one else in the parking lot is aware of his presence:

. . . just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn’t help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby,” and Connie turned away again without
Eddie noticing anything. (507)

Whether the quoted passage is long or short, what if you have no page numbers because you downloaded the story? Use the paragraph number in the citation instead of the page: (Oates par. 7). If your source does not provide paragraph numbers, the author’s name is all you can include: (Oates).

BRIEF QUOTATION from secondary source:

Source (as it will appear on Works Cited page):

Moser, Don. “The Pied Piper of Tucson: He Cruised in a Golden Car, Looking for the Action.” Life, 4 Mar.1966, pp. 18+, docs.google.com/document/d/1kVtIuZWfsUa9xBH5s7l_YcW8L2dr1M6TdVM1HghGxg0/edit?pli=1.

Friend is often reminiscent of Charles Schmid, the serial rapist/killer dubbed “The Pied Piper of Tucson” by the mid-Sixties media. “He habitually stuffed . . . old rags and tin cans into the bottoms of his high-topped boots to make himself taller . . .” (Moser 20).

Second option: signal phrase:

Friend is often reminiscent of Charles Schmid, the serial rapist/killer dubbed “The Pied Piper of Tucson” by the mid-Sixties media. According to Moser, “He habitually stuffed . . . old rags and tin cans into the bottoms of his high-topped boots to make himself taller. . .” (20).

LONG QUOTATION from secondary source:

Elements of Friend’s appearance and behavior derive from Charles Schnid, the Arizona murderer whose crimes had drawn Oates’s attention:

At the time of his arrest . . ., Charles Schmid was 23 years old. He wore face make-up and dyed his hair. He habitually stuffed three or four inches of old rags and tin cans into the bottoms of his high-topped boots to make himself taller than his five-foot-three and stumble about so awkwardly while walking that some people thought he had wooden feet. He pursed his lips and let his eyelids droop in order to emulate his idol, Elvis Presley. He bragged to girls that he knew 100 ways to make love, and that he ran dope, that he was a Hell’s Angel. (Moser 20)

Second option: signal phrase:

Elements of Friend’s appearance and behavior derive from Charles Schmid, the Arizona murderer whose crimes had drawn Oates’s attention. Don Moser, for example, had reported in Life magazine that

Schmid wore face make-up and dyed his hair. He habitually stuffed three or four inches of old rags and tin cans into the bottoms of his high-topped boots to make himself taller than his five-foot-three and stumble about so awkwardly while walking that some people thought he had wooden feet. He pursed his lips and let his eyelids droop in order to emulate his idol, Elvis Presley. He bragged to girls that he knew 100 ways to make love, and that he ran dope, that he was a Hell’s Angel. (20)

Once again, whether the quoted passage is long or short, if the source lacks page numbers, cite paragraph numbers or only the author’s name.

PARAPHRASE:

When you paraphrase, you borrow an observation or idea from a source, but you express it in your own words. Since the information or interpretation is not yours but is the intellectual property of the source, a citation is required. However, you are NOT quoting, so you should set up the paraphrase without quotation marks (reserved for short quotations) and without indenting (reserved for long quotations). At the point where you shift from your own ideas to the borrowed material, introduce the paraphrase with a signal phrase. This time it is not optional but mandatory. It lets your reader know that whatever is coming next was never originally yours. After the signal phrase, alter the words and sentence structures entirely; transform the passage to make it stylistically yours.

(The length of the paraphrase is immaterial; MLA makes no distinctions between a long one and a short one.)

Example:

Oates seems to have modeled Arnold Friend after Charles Schmid, whose multiple crimes terrorized Tucson not long before she wrote her story. As Don Moser points out, Schmid cruised the streets in makeshift disguise, his boots crammed with such oddities as tin cans and his skin tone darkened with foundation (20).

The signal pjrase — “As Don Moser points out” — and the citation — “(20)” — frame the paraphrase, so that your reader knows exactly where the borrowing begins and ends.

NOTE: As I transfer from Word to Outlook, I cannot always control margins, tabs, and indents in email format. Most problematic here were the examples of long quotations. To reiterate, EVERY line of a quotation longer than four lines must be INDENTED one inch from the left margin.

Though I have not double-space the examples, you should adhere to MLA and double-space everything.

For more help with citation format (and all things MLA), consult the Purdue OWL website.

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