Seeing the similarities between the pieces “Where are you Going, Where have you been”, the movie Smooth Talk and the three reports. It’s easy to see Charles Howard Schmid from the reports being the same guy from the short story and film. All the pieces fit together so much so that it may seem they are all telling the same story. As I said before it seems as if Charles Schmid and Arnold Friend could very well be the same man. The short story seems like a coming of age type of story for Connie. She starts off as a goofy young girl but later seems like she maybe will change how she acts in the end realizing she may attract the wrong kind of attention.

The parallels between the Bob Dylan song and the story may be about moving on or changing or something to that affect. Bob Dylan’s song reflects that someone is done with something and moving on to something else. The author of “Where are you Going, Where have you been” might have been trying to say that there comes a time when you have to leave something you used to do in the past and move on to doing something else. In his song Bob Dylan wrote “Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you”. That seems to clearly be saying to move forward with your life and forgot the old things you used to do.

The similarities between the three reports and the short story are very apparent as well. Arnold Friend seemed liked the type of person that didn’t want to grow up was very conscious of his appearance. He may not have been quite old as Arnold Friend was assumed to be but he was still into younger women. It might not have been said that he would but Arnold Friend seems like he would maybe kill to get what he wants.

Obviously being based on the story the movie is very similar. One thing I noticed in the movie that may point to being more about coming of age is the ending. She comes back in the end a different person. Everything else that happened in the movie was pretty much the same as in the story. Minus the ending from the movie the story leads to believe it would end like the articles did. That leads me to believe that most or parts of these stories could be combined to tell the same story.