Greasy Lake Short Story

Nature has a powerful way of portraying good vs. bad, which parallels to the same concept intertwined with human nature. In the story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author portrays this through the use of a lake by demonstrating its significance and relationship to the characters. At one time, the Greasy Lake was something of beauty and cleanliness, but then came to be the exact opposite. Through his writing, Boyle demonstrates how the setting can be a direct reflection of the characters and the experiences they encounter.

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.

Summer vacation. For most children and teens, the phrase conjures up images of hot, sunny days and vacations with the whole family to far-off places. We all envision lazy afternoons relaxing on the beach, playing in water parks, and going on picnics. But what happens when summer ends and the reality of another year of school sinks in?

In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake,” there are many subtle historical references. These references pertain to different events that were happening during the time period that the story takes place, and help to describe different parts of the plot. Casual readers may not even notice these interesting little bits of information, but upon paying closer attention; they would become aware of the small, almost unnecessary references that make this story so fascinating.

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

The title of Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake” before I start lets quickly get introduced to the word “greasy” and how it is used during this short story. the word greasy is indicating that the persons manners or behaviors are effusively polite in a way that is felt to be insincere and repulsive. Also it is based off of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Spirit in the Night.” The lyrics “It’s about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88”. The story focuses on three nineteen-year-old men living in a time (probably the 1960’s) the authors origin and motive of this story is to show the view of his childhood and the hell that he rose in the 80’s, time period and we can relate to this type of greasy behavior today. And generations to come. The narrator says, it was good to be bad, when young

Greasy Lake is the story of three friends who are bad characters. Until they run into a situation where they question, just how bad they are. Just because they act badly and look bad does not mean they are. They are teenagers in a period, “when courtesy and winning ways [are] out of style when it [is] good to be bad, when they [cultivate] decadence like a taste.” (112) They look bad, wearing torn-up leather jackets, slouching around with toothpicks in their mouths and wearing their shades morning, noon and night. They have the attitude, they drive their parents cars fast, and burn rubber as the pull out of the driveway. They have the bad habits. They drink “gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, and Bali Hai,

He is forced to conceal himself in the dark waters next to a dead body while witnessing others vandalize and destroy his car from a distance. “There was a smell in the air, raw and sweet at the same time, the smell of the sun firing buds and opening blossoms. I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization. Everything was still. This was nature.” These words are how he observes the nature surrounding him after the events take place. Where only a short time ago everything about Greasy Lake was full of life and promise it is now dead and still. He no longer sees nature the same way, or looks at the world as he once did. He beholds the world in a different manner, he will never view life in the way he used to. Everything has changed for him.

The author symbolizes the water as transition and spirituality, the lake is symbolized as the elusive badness the boys want so badly. The narrator notices that none of them are as bad as they try to act. After that night the narrator realizes he cannot make it in that life, rather the narrator wants to go to the safety and security of his home and parents.

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

The primary theme of. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" is the journey that people take to their own dark sides, although the propensity of males toward violence is also a theme. The story begins with three men heading out for an adventure that soon goes wrong and ends up changing the narrators personality by making a change of maturity towards the end .

“Greasy Lake” by T. C. Bolyle narrated from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, told as a reflective account of his youth. In the story, he recounts details of his experiences on a summer evening with two friends. The reader experiences the misadventures of the protagonist that night along as told from the viewpoint of the now mature narrators retrospective. Exposed in the story are two character traits of the protagonist. Those traits are immaturity and rebellion, along with the trait of introspection on the part of the narrator.

The stories “A&P” and “Greasy Lake” are similer to each other due to the fact that they both are about a young man still trying to figure out what they plan to do with there life, they both feel that rebellion is cool, and they both learn a lesson threw there rebellious acts. Both charactors are the age of nineteen. This is a time of life when you start to experience some new freedoms. Most of your friends own and can drive cars so you are no longer bound by your parents and the bus to get you to points a and b, You can buy cigarrets, see a R rated movie in theaters. This is also a coming of age time when you are pressure to find out what you plan to do the rest of your life. Other adults start to look at you as your equill instead of

Greasy Lake is described by the narrator as an aura of possessiveness and suspense to the average reader. However, while somewhat stereotypical, the narrator and his friends see the lake as the most ideal location to get together on late nights. This can be translated as the beginning of setting a scene for a location in which the adolescent youth can meet, with the reference to Bruce Springsteen’s words from a song that opens the story: “It’s about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88” (Boyle, 125). The words from the song create a scene of how the youth had essentially treated the lake as their own place. The image is further made clear when the faint island in the middle of the lake is described as “a single ravaged island a hundred yards from

"Greasy Lake" by Tom Coraghessan Boyle, is the story of a group of adolescents, searching for the one situation that will proclaim them as bad boys and how their minds change. As the story begins, the narrator gives the impression that he feels he and the others boys should have taken notice of some obvious clues about themselves. These clues would have led them to the conclusion that they were far from the bad guys they wished to be. However, the oblivious teenagers ignore these obvious signs and continue in search of their goal.