Comparison Of 'Killings And An Ounce Of Cure'

They Pack up their things into backpacks and hop onto a freight train to chicago. When in chicago the boys meet a trucker named Sharon who drives them all the way to wyoming. Than they hid in the bottom luggage department of a bus on their way to the Tetons. When They reach the Tetons they make a little camp by a small secluded lake. An scary thing that happens is a Black Bear attacks their camp for the berries they picked. Then they get caught by a Forest Ranger and run into the woods. Where they meet Skeet. Skeet got his arm stuck under a boulder and the boys freed him. In return he showed them how to survive in the wilderness. He took them to the ranger station because he heard their mom was there looking for them. At the ranger station Bull is waiting for the boys so they don’t say anything and he doesn’t go to jail. The boys beat up Bull and escape to the cliff where their father lives. Bull and their father get in a fight and Abe (their father) wins. And it ends with them Going to sleep that night with their father that they

In the short story “Greasy Lake,” the author T. Coraghessan Boyle introduces us to the narrator and his group of friends who are going to Greasy Lake to have some fun like the rest of the kids their age. Although the author does not give us the name of the narrator, we learn that he is nineteen just like his other two friends. As the story progresses, we learn that after arriving at the lake, they confuse someone’s car for their friend Tony Lovett’s car, so they decide to play a little joke. They soon learn that it is not Tony but rather a stranger who is looking for trouble and wants to pick a fight with them. After looking for trouble with this bad character’s girlfriend, they bolted out of the scene when a second car arrived.

The main characters are Mackenzie, Josh, Courtney, Blake, Aaron, and Kyle. The story takes place the summer after their senior year in high school in Josh and Blake's Cabin in the woods. The problem is that Josh and Courtney are found dead in the kitchen of the cabin but no one knows who did it. The doors and windows were all locked with no sign of forced entry and they are suspicious someone in house

The story “Greasy Lake,” by T.C. Boyle, is about a man recounting a tale from his younger days. The man and his two friends, Jeff and Digby decide to go looking for trouble, and take the narrator’s mother’s Bel Air up to the local hangout spot, Greasy Lake. They see a car that believes is their friend Tony’s and decide to harass Tony, but it happens to be not the one which caused stranger greasy guy to fight the three. Originally losing, it takes the narrator sneakily using a tire iron to beat the greasy guy. The girl gets out of the car, and when the narrator, Jeff and Digby see her, they attempt to rape her. However, they are interrupted by an approaching car, and in their guilt flee. The narrator flees into the lake where he comes across a body. He waits in the lake however, while the men that arrived in the car damage his mother’s Bel Air. Eventually they leave though, and the young men come out of hiding after a long time of waiting. They decide it’s time to go after the dead body’s friends had arrived. Boyle’s central idea is that young society does what they can to be seemed cool; however, in reality they

They run into a crashed airplane, where they go inside in order to find supplies. While inside, Stephen sees two slaves who were being held hostage by a group of people. After being seen, the group of people chase Stephen and his father away. Stephen’s father falls into a river, hit his head on a rock, and gets knocked out. This causes Stephen and his father to be captured by the group of people.

The discovery of the biker’s body is the turning point in not only the story, but also in the narrator’s life. In a short time, he has been beaten, has knocked out someone with a tire iron, almost raped a woman, found a dead body, and watched his mother’s Bel Air station wagon be destroyed. Which was all done for the rush of excitement. While hiding in the water that was previously seen as a tarn of doom, with all the nights occurrences spinning in his head, he has an epiphany. Standing there he realizes what becomes of “tough-guys” and discovers that he has found his salvation within his true self. Accordingly, as the narrator emerges from Greasy Lake, he is a new person with a newly discovered perspective. As the sun is rising and the songs of birds replace the sounds of crickets, he leaves the pool of once dismal waters (Boyle 118). This signals his rebirth and his baptism as a reformed adolescent.

The kids in the story are 19 years old, it takes place the summer after their first year of college. College is the reason kids of that age are at Greasy lake and not fighting in war. The outlook the narrator has on life before his experience at Greasy lake is the same attitude kids going into war had. His perception of the world after what happens at Greasy lake is the same perception men who have fought in battle and seen death have. Nothing about life is the same for the narrator after all that happens to him at Greasy lake. Nothing in life is ever the same for the young kids who fought and got caught up in the stupidity of war during Vietnam. Much of the story relates to the Vietnam war. "We were nineteen. We were bad. We read Andre Gide and struck elaborate poses to show that we didn't give a shit about anything. At night we went up to Greasy Lake." The attitude the speaker of these words has is the same attitude the cocky, nineteen year old kids had as they went off to fight war. "I wanted to get out of the car and retch, I wanted to go home to my parents house and crawl into bed." The honesty and fear spoken with these words symbolize the change of attitude the young Vietnam soldiers had after experiencing the horrors of war. The characters in Greasy Lake learn that they are not tough "bad characters" but scared children who are alone and lost in the world, the kids who fought battle in Vietnam went

When they are out being bad they like to drive to greasy lake were they can drink beer, smoke pot and howl at the stars. One night they go down to greasy lake and mistaken a car for there friend Tonys and they lay the horn and flash there high beams at it. Turns out not to be tonys car but some strangers. The stranger gets out not happy and begins to fight the gang of kids in the mist of it all the narraighter drops his keys to his car. The stranger seems to be winning the fight until the narratoir grabs a tire iron from under his seat and hits the stranger across the head with it knocking the stranger out. Then another car comes down to greasy lake unable to find the car keys the group of kids runs away into greasy lake. While the narrator is in the water he finds a dead body. The other car turns out to be the strangers friends and they wreck the group of kids car. The narratoir and his friends wait till morning for greasy lake to clear out. Once it does they head back to there car when two girls arrive asking if they seen there friend who we presume is the dead guy in the lake. They tell the two girls no, and they respond by saying how it looks like they had a rough night, and ask if they want to party with them. The narraitoir says no and they get in the car and head

The characters in “Greasy Lake” can be viewed in different lights. The narrator and his two friends, Digby and Jeff, are three mean boys whose lives seem to be centered around getting drunk and high from dusk until dawn. The narrator praises Digby and Jeff for their slick and dangerous lifestyles. Their skills consist of dancing, drinking, and “rolling a joint as compact as a Tootsie Roll Pop stick” (65) while on a bumpy drive. These characters scream trouble. They seem like harmless teenagers out to have a good time but it can be interpreted that these characters will attract mischief. After a night of bar-hopping, dancing, eating, drinking, and smoking, they decide to continue the party with a bottle of gin on the shores of broken glass and charred wood. These characters can be interpreted as young, naive, wild, reckless fools. The decisions these kids have been making the entire night have not been good ones. They have driven to bar after bar, consuming drink after drink. Obviously, their decision making is impaired. The reader should realize that the road the boys are travelling on is one that leads to a bad place. It is a place that has everything to do with Greasy Lake. It’s a place where dangerous things happen. The allegorical element that is found in the boys is

In the short stories “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver and “A + P” by John Updike the protagonists experience an epiphany that change their restricted way of thinking. The main character, “Sammy” in John Updike’s, “A + P” is a teenage boy working in the town grocery store. Sammy experiences an epiphany when he decides to quit his job at the grocery store. He quit because he believed that it was wrong of his boss to treat customers poorly due to any pre-conceived notion that was determined by what the customer looks like. Raymond Carver’s main character named “the husband” in his story “Cathedral” experiences an epiphany

Originally the narrator is as corrupted as the lake; though born pure and “clear” he becomes tainted by the “beer” and wildness of his culture. As the character ventures to the lake on the night that the majority of the story takes place in, it is not difficult for the reader to correctly predict that some action he takes will lead to some unfortunate event for him and his friends. The narrator comments that losing his keys after unknowingly instigating a fight is “[his] first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate,” (131) foreshadowing the grave and life-threatening events to come. After nearly killing a man and nearly raping a woman, the narrator finds himself in the murky waters of Greasy Lake next to a rotting body of a dead biker. However, after emerging from the water after what appear to be many hours, the narrator realizes how repugnant and unpleasant Greasy Lake is and realizes after seeing the dead body in the lake what happens to the people that frequent the lake. Since Greasy Lake represents the society and culture that the narrator is living in, the fact that he realizes that the lake is this repulsing is a self-realization that his life style is the same.

They were looking for their friend on the motorcycle. As the woman asked the narrator, he could not stop and think of the man he found in the lake. So why wasn't he the bad boy persona as they were the night before? This is what they were looking for? The harsh realities of being adolescente hit home. The immature state was confronted: there in front of all three of them, this was exactly what they were looking for at Greasy Lake and they couldn't commit. The agony of defeat when you realize that you are not the bad boy imagine, but just a child in a

The three teenagers wanted to go out one night to go look for trouble. Digby, Jeff and the narrator all head out

Before they do, a young woman tells them “’Hey, you guys look like some pretty bad characters…’” (530) and asks if they want to party. Digby declines on behalf of the group while the narrator is on the verge of tears. Most likely, this is the last time they play as dangerous

“A&P” by John Updike and “I Want to Know Why” by Sherwood Anderson are both fictional short stories in which there are epiphanies of the main characters that change their lives in a negative way. The epiphany presented in “A&P” is more abrupt and lacks information about the main character’s life following his decisions while the epiphany presented in “I Want to Know Why” is more drawn out with a more meaningful follow-up on the narrator’s life. Figurative language, a heavily used literary tool, is utilized in abundance in both short stories, and both Anderson and Updike’s stories use it to emphasize the epiphanies of the main characters. After reading the short stories “A&P” and “I Want to Know Why,” Anderson’s story had a more meaningful epiphany and a stronger use of literary devices such as tone shifts, stream of consciousness, and symbolism through the use of figurative language.