Need help finishing the ending to Joyce Carol Oates Where are you going? Where have you been?

Question

since the ending to this short story seems unfinished, I need help writing an ending. I was thinking that i'm going to write about her going with arnold and then he rapes her and she gets away. She escapes becasue everyone is expecting her to get murdered. Help please. My email is [e-mail]...

i'm not saying she didn't finish it, it just ends suddenly, i'm just writing an ending... I'm not trying to publish it or anything, it's for school. so please don't think i'm trying to say she's a bad writer or anything. I think it's a great story.

Answer 1

Oates finished the story. She is a great writer and if she thought there should be more, she would have written more. It would be terribly difficult to write a different ending. No one gets away from A. Friend. Oates got her "story" idea from a real killer who was abducting women and killing and raping them in Arizona, but she changed some details and facts. Try reading the story again and study the "what" and "why" parts. There are many underlying things that readers miss by not reading carefully, particularly in the beginning.

Answer 2

I agree with the previous answer: Oates ended the story where it should have ended. To me, the point is that, although the girl is a self-centered teenager trying to distance herself from the family she considers dull and out of it, she finally chooses to go with Arnold Friend rather than endanger them by letting them come home while he's there. Instead of writing about what he does or tries to do to her, why not focus on her family, coming home to find her gone and then learning, some time later, that she's been raped and murdered? They'd probably attribute her fate to her own immature bad judgment and never realize that she was also trying to protect them.