• Reading Group Guide

Joyce Carol Oates is undoubtedly one of the most prolific writers
in the canons of Western and American belles-lettres. Her novels,
short stories, poems, plays, literary articles, scholarly pieces
and nonfiction essays are lofty contributions to the worlds of
literature and popular culture.

The breadth and scope of her work is astounding. To read Joyce
Carol Oates is to read a commentary on society and to look at the
conscience of the world, through the eyes of those who create and
inhabit it. Through her writing she ennobles the art of fiction,
the splendor of poetry, the exhilaration of theater, while at the
same time, she brings a heightened level of insight and fullness to
her nonfiction.

Oates's newest novel, I'LL TAKE YOU THERE, is set in upstate New
York, familiar terrain for her fiction. The story centers on
Anellia (not her real name), the first person narrator, who longs
to escape her sad and tawdry home life. After her mother dies and
her father leaves, she is abandoned to her overly stern
grandparents. She is miserable, sheltered, and despite her great
intellect, is ignorant of the everyday "games people play" to get
along and to get what they want. She has grown up knowing only that
she is blamed for her mother's death, which has made her the target
of hatred and cruelty at the hands of her brothers and grandmother.
She carries these scars valiantly, but doesn't understand their
impact on her personality.

When she speaks of herself she describes a wraithlike figure,
shivering with cold even in the brightest sunshine. As a little
girl she learned to live in her head and shape herself into a
chameleon-like character --- she adopts roles she thinks will make
people accept her. She is an eccentric youngster who often
fantasizes about not being part of the real world, of living a life
of the mind. Nevertheless, despite these idiosyncrasies, she
manages to win a New York State Regents scholarship to Syracuse
University.

At last, Anellia thinks, she's on her way to a new, richer life.
She heads off to college with the best of intentions --- all she
wants is to become one of the coeds, stimulate her intellect, and
put the past behind her. But not long after her arrival on campus,
in a moment of insight, Anellia says, [back home] … "I had
never imagined a true library: a university library in whose stacks
I might wander mesmerized for years … yet I saw myself at
Syracuse as alone and beleaguered and fighting for my life …
I was in a perpetual state of agitation."

Soon she finds herself flustered and flattered to be asked to join
a popular sorority. And here is where the story shifts slightly, a
tilt that allows the narrative's pervasive shadows to become a
little darker, a little more defined. For reasons Anellia cannot at
first ascertain, she is not comfortable or happy as a member of
Kappa Gamma Pi. Then, in a shocking moment of clarity, she
discovers that her "sisters," with whom she really has nothing in
common, are using her as a conduit to better their grades, and in
the end, they betray her. These vapid and vicious girls set her up
as a patsy, which causes her loss of innocence and dims the sparkle
of her earlier expectations. When Anellia leaves the "Kappas," she
has no choice but to move on; but with no money, no friends, and no
place to go, her prospects are bleak.

One of the most interesting devices the author uses in I'LL TAKE
YOU THERE is both interior monologue and real-time observations.
This gives us a fuller picture of Anellia's dilemmas and clues to
her confoundedness. She remarks, "The study of philosophy is the
study of the human mind" … and also one of the leitmotifs
threaded throughout the whole of I'LL TAKE YOU THERE. Oates quotes
all of the philosophers from Socrates to Sartre, which imbues the
book with a heady concentration on the human condition. Readers may
find these asides a bit distracting at first, but as the plot roars
on, it becomes clear that the notion of studying the human mind is,
according to our narrator, "… to be baffled utterly."

It is with this mindset that Anellia becomes obsessed with a
troubled, but brilliant, black graduate student she meets in an
Ethics class. "…That voice … like a musical instrument
… was both respectful and insolent … searching and
earnest …" in its defense of its owner's ideas; and, without
a glance backward or second thought, the young Anellia decides she
has fallen in love with this man.

Their perverse affair is hopelessly doomed, but Anellia's
single-mindedness pushes the situation to a place where she accepts
the punishment she thinks she deserves for falling in love. When
this painful fiasco is over, a phone call from one of her brothers
brings news of a relative once thought dead, which puts in place
the events that change Anellia's life forever.

All of these seemingly disparate threads do come together in a
cohesive, beautifully written novel. Readers will find that I'LL
TAKE YOU THERE is a story of a life reflected in shades of gray. A
character study that provokes questions about how individuals
manage to live their lives; where and how can any person stable or
unstable find some kind of peace? Anellia's life and her
experiences are not unique to her. She is "every girl" who is not
willing to wrap herself inside a cocoon of hypocrisy, and she
represents those women who wish to move beyond the bonds that bind
females to roles as mother, wife, friend, daughter, and object.
Joyce Carol Oates has created a heroine, who, at first, has no idea
how strong she is, and does not understand how worthy she is until
her great epiphany. In the end, Anellia knows she is and will
always be a survivor.