Greasy Lake Summary

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.

Adolescence marks the turning point of an individual's life, establishing the foundation of their development. It is during this phase that individuals leave behind the comfort of childhood and enter a reality beset with new perceptions of life. There are many stages of life, each enclosing its own distinct characteristics. As evident in the short story, The Master of Disaster, written by Guy Vanderhaeghe, adolescence involves growth as an individual, both physically and emotionally. Although each phase has its own challenges and difficulties, adolescence proves to be the most difficult stage of life to overcome. Through examination of the situations in the story, it becomes apparent that adolescence involves experiencing emotional

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.

T. C. Boyle uses many military and political terms from the Vietnam War to describe events in the story. In “Greasy Lake,” T.C. Boyle describes the mistake that worsened the situation ten fold:

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,

“Greasy Lake is a short story written by T.C Boyle. The short story mostly focuses on three nineteen-year-old boys. The three of the boys went one night on a summer vacation in an area close to a shiny and muddy lake. The teenagers were looking for trouble on a summer evening and end of finding it. In the story at the author tells the reader, that it was a time when it was "good to be bad." But the story shows that the three boys are truly lost. The story shows the reader the changing of time in culture that these teenagers want to be a part of. Even though, they lack to leave the comforts of their upper middle class lifestyle.

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 story Greasy Lake written by T.C. Boyle, the story is about three friends who believe they are “bad”. On a particular night they go out looking for trouble, and trouble is what they find. The tone of this story is serious, dark, and very graphic. This story is full of literary devices. Metaphors and similes come thick and fast on the shores of Greasy Lake, and Boyle never contents himself with one when he can offer two or three. The comparisons for their abundance, are neither aimless nor without purpose; they enable us to see the referent from strategic points of view.

“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 characteristic of slow work repeats in the two types of stories told by Fr. Boyle. The one that grabs the readers’ attention more describes the lives of people in detail and with resolution. Whether the youth he met ends up going to a jail or finds a job and a home in Homeboy Industries, we know to an extent what their stories are. We can understand and imagine the lives of the youth from childhood, the problems they faced, the way they went about handling them, and what Fr. Boyle thought and did during those times. The other type consists of brief mentions of the people Fr. Boyle ran into. He can only tell us what happened and what he hoped at the time, but we are left without fuller stories of the people. These unsatisfying accounts, however, are proof of the author’s intention for writing this book. We are not supposed to read about the lives and, really, the challenging situations of the youth and attempt to find solutions. Especially as a stereotypical student studying at Georgetown University, I tend to think I need to fix the problem and make the world a better place. But the purpose of the book is really to teach me to have compassion. So, the readers can notice from the two types of stories Fr. Boyle

In many cultures, coming of age is often celebrated because children become young adults who grasp self-awareness and accountability. At the same time, childhood is threatened by responsibility, which is dreaded because there is an unpredictable world of adulthood waiting with no guarantees. James Hurst demonstrates the journey of growing up through life experiences everyone goes through in the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”. Throughout his use of mood, setting, and symbolism, Hurst shows that maturing requires reflecting on past experiences and losing innocence, which then can transform one’s outlook on life.

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

In his short story “Greasy Lake,” the lake with the community teenagers create a stereotypical scene of current youth pop culture. Many youth who read this story can find the ironic references and similarities with their lifestyle in today’s world. T. Coraghessan Boyle uses the setting of the story to expose a world lacking self-discipline and showing immorality amongst a community youth, which can sometimes be rather common today. This also aids in creating an atmosphere that surrounds suspense and impaired judgement to better develop the characters of the story. Boyle is able to achieve this by creating a setting with the story of the Greasy Lake and describing the Lake as both a setting and main character.

Boyle, Tom Coraghessan. "Greasy Lake." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999.