A Comparison of the Short Stories "Good Country People" and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You been?"

There are many similarities between the short stories "Good Country People" and "Where are you going, Where have you been?", most notably their characters. Both stories contain a female protagonist, and a male antagonist, whose confrontations start out relatively normal, and progress to more and more surreal and twisted endings. Their main characters, Hulga and Connie, are shockingly similar, and yet strangely different, one a 15 year old wishing to be older and beautiful, the other a bitter 32 year old, wishing to be younger and ugly. These stories tell the tales of impressionable young women who are tempted by the delights of strange men, only to prove to themselves in the end how naive they really are.…