Mr. Wrong in Hamlet and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? This essay will consider how the character Gertrude from Hamlet and the character Connie from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” they both end up with the wrong man. The essay will compare how these "wrong men" were similar and why Gertrude and Connie may have fallen in love with them. Gertrude was married to someone else when she fell in love with Claudius. The play indicates that he began courting her long before Hamlet's father died, hence their marriage so quickly after his death. “Within a month, even before the salt of the most unjust tears had left the redness in his sore eyes, he was married.” Connie was single when Arnold Friend approached her, but she had dated other guys, like Eddie at the drive-in. Arnold wasn't the first young man to pay attention to her. In both cases, Gertrude and Connie chose the worst man when they had something better. This is evident in Gertrude's case. The Ghost says so: "What a fall was that... abandoning myself to a wretch whose natural gifts were meager compared to those of mine", and Hamlet says to her face: "Could you up this fair mountain go and feed yourself and splint on this moor?" Gertrude does not dispute this statement. With Connie we find that the other guys she dated were nice and sweet and kind, and Connie really liked them. “Her mind drifted to thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how kind he had been, how sweet he always was… the way he was in the movies and the way he promised in the songs.” Gertrude also seemed to really like Hamlet's father, at least once. “Why, she clung to him as if her appetite were increased by what she fed on,” Hamlet said. They both knew... half the document... they didn't know what kind of man Claudio was, while we know that Connie had some clues. In the end, Gertrude ends up dying due to her wrong choice. and his naivety, and Connie most likely does too. Their naivety ends up becoming their fatal flaw. Gertrude's bad judgment may also have contributed to the deaths of everyone else, because if she had rejected Claudius' advances perhaps none of this would have happened. If Connie had called the police, maybe Arnold Friend would have been caught and put in prison. At the very least, if she hadn't gone with him, at least her family wouldn't have lost their daughter. Both bring destruction not only on themselves but also on others due to their gullibility. Works Cited: Korb, Rena. "Where are you going, where have you been?" Short stories for students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1997.