Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Oates' creepy short story has a murky ending layered in symbolism. Connie could possibly have been raped or murdered. I think that the content of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" supports that Connie was murdered. Her breath "jerk[s] back and forth in her lungs as if Arnold Friend were stabbing her again and again with no tenderness." This not only shows that Arnold is stabbing her (most likely with a kitchen knife because she is in the kitchen), but is supported by the following quotation : "She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall. She was hollow with what had been fear, but what was now emptiness...and deep inside her brain was something like a pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her relax."
The very last scene, where she mentions that Arnold "was taken up by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it." This means to me that Connie has died and succumbed to the point of light, and now she is on her way to Heaven, free of Arnold's devilish hands.