Summary Of ' Greasy Lake ' Essay

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.

Steven Herrick’s work of “By the river” displays a bildungsroman novel in which harry goes on a journey through life, facing love and loss.

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.

In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake,” there are many subtle historical references.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.

In the Lake of the Woods is a fictional mystery written by Tim O'Brien. Through the book we learn that our lovers, husbands, and wives have qualities beyond what our eyes can see. John Wade and Kathy are in a marriage so obscure that their secrets lead to an emotional downfall. After John Wade loss in his Senatorial Campaign, his feeling towards Kathy take on a whole different outlook. His compulsive and obsessive behavior causes Kathy to distance herself from him. His war experience and emotional trauma are a major cause for his strange behavior. We remain pondering about Kathy's mysterious disappearance, which becomes fatal for her. Possible scenarios are presented in eight

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,

Sudden and Ironic events that happen to the narrator in T.C. Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake” are the same type of events that in an instant will change a person forever. The ironic circumstances that the narrator in “Greasy Lake” finds himself in are the same circumstances that young people find themselves in when fighting war.

“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

“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.

Isolation, meaning a state of separation, is often misperceived by many as people frequently believe that isolation is always a negative state of being; that isolation due to emotions is non-realistic, and that isolation is always involuntary. These myths are commonly accepted; however, the novel Crow Lake takes a different stand from these myths. Mary Lawson, author of the novel, demonstrated isolations in many of its forms through the protagonist, Kate, and a small, desolated rural community that represented the primary setting of the novel, Crow Lake. By doing so, Lawson reveals the counterfactual nature of these myths and thus correcting the misconceptions that the society has about isolation.

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.