Outline Throughout the story of Greasy Lake, the main character has an epiphany, or a sudden insight into the reality. This young teen, the protagonist, who narrates the story, is roughened up throughout the night with different events leading up to the event where he no longer cares to embrace the bad side of him. He just wants to survive and go home. TS 1.) The gang of friends believes that they are all “bad characters” and because of this have the right to do anything as they please.
The Greasy Lake Story In the short story “Greasy Lake” written by an American Novelist most known by T. C. Boyle is a sensational and a thriller story. Greasy Lake is a story of three young nineteen year old substandard and bad boys, the narrator of the story and his two friends Digby and Jeff. Boyle describes their "Bad Boy" behavior: “we wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether…” (170). Boyle descriptions explains how and what a bad boy could look like that causes a lot of trouble. The plot summary of the story starts off by a little hangout lake called Greasy Lake where they can do whatever they want as they are pleased; watch a girl strip off her clothes, drink beer, smoke pot, and howl at the stars.
Greasy Lake uses many symbols to enhance the theme. The individual vehicles are symbols of the characters in the portion of the story they appear. The narrator describes the car he and his friends drive as an old station wagon, obviously not the ride of a true tough guy. When the boys arrive at the lake a “Chopper is parked on shore and next to it a 57 Chevy” (Boyle 189). The Chevy owner is a tough muscular guy who beats the crap out of the narrator.
“…gin in one hand and a roach clip in the other”(pg 2), they took drugs and drank alcohol, listened to loud music, wrecked others’ properties, watched people make out by the lake, and “didn’t give a shit about anything” as they drove recklessly. The author portrays Greasy Lake as “fetid and murky” (pg 1) with its banks “glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires” (pg 1). This image of destruction parallels with and supports the main characters’ violent behaviour, thus explaining why they to Greasy Lake. As the teenagers rebel, they allow their primal instincts to govern themselves. Dictions including “snuff”, “howl”, and “primeval susurrus” (pg 1) imitate their animalistic behaviour as they inch towards what they perceived as “nature” (pg 2) then, which is to rebel.
The underworld was a very crowded place, especially at the mouth of the Styx where Chiron the 'no longer young' boatman ferried the dead across the river. We know that this area is crowded as Aeneas is amazed and distressed by Chiron pushing people away from the boat. He cries out "tell me, virgin priestess, what is the meaning go this crowding to the river? What do the spirits want? Why are some pushed away from the bank while others sweep the livid water with their arm?"
An analysis of “Greasy Lake”, however, reveals that this act of rebellion may come with a heavy toll and that no matter how bad you think you are, there will always be someone worse. Boyle begins “Greasy Lake” with the lines “There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, and it was good to be bad” and “We drank gin and grape juice….we were nineteen…we were bad” further reinforcing the idea of teenage rebellion (294). Boyle’s story is in the form of a first person narrative, and follows an unnamed narrator and his two friends Jeff and Digby, the former being a contemplative artist/headshop owner while the later is a current undergrad at Cornell. The narrative is key in the structure of the story, as it allows you to see the events unfold through the eyes of a naïve narrator on his journey. The three see themselves as tough characters, though this is purely superficial, as their personalities have not been tested in the matter.
In today’s society, the environmental issues that appear on television the most include overpopulation, air pollution, climate change, and water pollution. In this essay, I would like to focus on an aspect of water pollution that has been overlooked by the general public. This lurking environmental danger in the ocean is called a Dead Zone. In Tom Levitt’s article for CNN, Levitt writes: “Aquatic "dead zones" are a tragic illustration of human beings' negative impact on the world's oceans. They are areas so overloaded with pollutants that they have difficulty sustaining any life.” Dead Zones are created by fertilizer and pollution run off from our very own backyards.
The lake itself is described as “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (130) However, as the narrator explains, the lake was not always like this but instead was named “Wakan” by “the Indians”, the name being “a reference to the clarity of its waters.” (130) The complete change of the lake since the time of the Indians, from clear to murky, exemplifies the corruption of the society’s morals, especially in contrast to the Native Americans who praised and looked after the land. The Wakan, or Greasy Lake, is a symbol for the youth culture itself in the story and is littered, literally and metaphorically, by alcohol, sex and violence. Through the use of the setting as a symbol of corruption and sin, Boyle creates a wild and uncertain atmosphere. In doing so, he allows the characters to have more freedom and gives the story more believability as the events become more extreme. Along with making the action more believable, the setting helps to make the characters more believable.
It is also about loss of innocence and coming of age. What these kids do not know is that they are not as bad as they think. They face major consequences that will irreversibly change their lives. Whether it is in 1963 or 2011, kids will be kids and everyone thinks they are bad when they are teens, until they get hit with a large dose of reality. The characters in “Greasy Lake”, no doubt had intensions of causing some type of trouble.
Page 1 The Dominance on Mankind "The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan and "Traveling Through the dark" by William Stafford treats nature differently. One poem states why would people enjoy torturing a wild animal and the other tells the story of finding a dead deer (pregnant) in the road while driving along one night. In both poems, mankind shows domination, but each treats dominance differently. Nowlan shows how the civilians showed no sympathy for the nature but Stafford shows that a civilian has compassion towards nature. In "The Bull Moose", the civilians in the poem showed no compassion towards nature.