Although Jeff, Digby, and the narrator of the short story, “Greasy Lake” feel that their behavior is dangerous, rebellious, and “bad,” in reality the three nineteen year old boys are nothing of the sort. The narrator in, “Greasy Lake,” may describe the three boys as being “bad,” but the symbols that author T. Coraghessan Boyle places throughout the story depletes the bad boy images that they believe they possess. One symbol, for example, is the multiple vehicles that appear all through the story. Each vehicle symbolizes who is considered bad in the story and who is not. The narrator describes how he drives Jeff, Digby, and himself all throughout the town and to Greasy Lake in his mother’s station wagon.
The author describes a certain night where things at Greasy Lake were going to change. In an opening scene, the main character and his best friends, Digby and Jeff are driving to Greasy Lake just like any other night, when Digby spots what he thought was his friend’s car driving ahead of them. They speed up trying to get the drivers attention when they realized it wasn’t their friend. The rough older man pulls over and the protagonist and his friends decided it would be a good idea trying to beat the man up, but things soon went wrong. When the main character gets out of his car he accidently drops his car keys.
Inevitably, many juveniles will follow a path in life that is outside of the civil norm, while the hope of the people around them is that they will grow out of their disrespectful ways sooner than later. In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake,” the reader is taken on a hard and fast ride, an awakening for three teenage men learning the importance of the “courtesy and winning ways” they had so happily disregarded in their young-adult lives (125). The narrator quickly develops the dangerous attitudes and desires he shares with his two misfit companions, all delusional with their presumed level of badness. The author tells the tale of the destiny such “dangerous characters” can expect when they choose to follow a path forged by others more suited to be champions of wretchedness (126). As the three men travel to Greasy Lake, a moniker describing the lake and their lifestyles, the narrator, Jeff and Digby end a night of hooligan antics with a visit from the spirits of hooliganism present and hooliganism yet-to-come.
In one commercial John tries to explain the perks of a new car. Doug has another issue on his mind, a back scratch. While John talks to the customer, Doug mocks him, and asks the customer to rub his back with a lint roller. As she rubs Doug goes into an orgasmic fit, shouting out random phrases and names like George Washington, and I love America! Its all fun and games until the woman’s boyfriend shows up, and John is left to repair the awkwardly tattered situation.
Greasy Lake Greasy Lake, by T. Coraghessan Boyle, reveals a time where three teenage boys have an enlightened transformation as they go through a series of mistakes, repercussion, and reformation. The three friends, who have considered themselves “dangerous” and “bad boys”, realize that being "bad" is not anything like they imagined. After experiencing a night full of terrible misadventure, the boys realize that living a truly wayward and high-risk lifestyle is not for them. Boyle’s coming of age story explores a turning point of the young men’s road to maturity. The three boys in Greasy Lake go through a sequence of events which cause them to think differently about themselves; they go find themselves making mistakes, reaping the consequences, and experience an enlightened transformation.
In the story “Greasy Lake" by Tom Coraghessan Boyle, a group of youngsters are searching for that one situation that will declare them as bad boys .Boyle used the theme of being bad by using the different characters to symbolize someone always trying to be more than they really are which many teenagers could relate to. The bar is set high on being bad ,in order to be looked at as cool or popular.The narrator in the beginng of the story thought him and his friends were cool and that "it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. "(Boyle 408) Painful lessons were learned that teaches the narrator that there will be consequences .Boyle uses many symbols to create the theme. From the begging of the story , the car they drive to Greasy Lake was an old station wagon, thats without a doubt ,not the “ride” of a true tough-guy. Soon as the boys arrive at the Greasy Lake, a “chopper” is parked on the shore, and next to it is a 57 Chevy (Boyle 413).
On a late night the young boys head to the lake with the wrong intentions, seeking trouble, and trouble is what they find. Typical of young teens that when young and naive, tend to make decisions which they think is right in order to gain their self-identity. They want to be popular and so they think that if they become bad, they will stand out from the crowd. They wanted to stand out and feel the experience of “being bad boys” (529). In order to achieve the feeling, they went ahead and befriended a bad boy; they almost raped a girl and murdered someone.
Many of the acts these men participate in are odd and rather ridiculous: driving street illegal home made limos around London's busiest streets, and driving average Carolas through swamps hopping if they drive fast enough they will make it to the other side-are just a few examples of their craziness. The humor not only comes from their attempts but from their failures, often times shadowed by their cast mates harassing comments. I have found myself many a times laughing so hard my stomach hurts when James and Richard gang up and make puns about how Jeremy should 'abandon ship' now before he sinks to the bottom of the swamp with his car after trying to drive it at full speed into the water... only to get stuck in the middle of the murky
| Texting While Driving | Final Paper | | | 12/9/2010 | | Imagine you’re driving home from work and as you ponder the thought on whether or not to grab a quick bite to eat; you notice someone, up ahead, drifting into another lane. The person in front of you is tapping on his brakes every few seconds. Also, you have someone cutting you off, almost clipping your car with the absence of a blinker. Unfortunately, most often than not, these incidents where drivers are being careless about paying attention, are often the results of texting while driving. Texting while driving is rapidly becoming a deathly new fad especially for people between the ages of 15-20 years old, creating a serious threat to the safety of our roads and
When the boys lived in civilization, they were taught that killing and even hurting someone or something was wrong. In this moment the readers witness that Jack’s morals are still in place and he has difficulty dismissing them. The longer the boys are away from civilization, the harder it becomes for them to stay moral. The begin to acknowledge that they are no longer obligated to do