Three young men are about to undergo a rite of maturity that will take them from innocence to experience and from the last vestiges of childhood into the opening round of maturity. The unnamed narrator and his friends Jeff and Digby are what would today be referred to as poseurs although what they are really are merely young men struggling to find their identity in an increasingly confusing world. Even so, it is the misplaced identification with gritty urban heroes of books and screen by these ordinary suburban boys that situates them into a place where Greasy Lake becomes the baptismal.
Aug 13, 2013 Digital Explication of the short story Greasy Lake by T.C. At night, we went up to Greasy Lake. Through the centre of town, up the strip, past the housing developments and shopping malls, streetlights giving way to the thin streaming illumination of the headlights, trees crowding the asphalt in a black unbroken wall: that was the way out to Greasy Lake.
Trouble begins with the trio makes a far more miscalculated misidentification: that of thinking that a car parked up at Greasy Lake belongs to their friend Tony Lovett. As boys—not to mention some more mature and experienced men who should admittedly know better—will do, they act on their initial impulse to prank Tony as he is—or so they think—in the middle of a romantic tryst. After all, what other reason exists for being at Greasy Lake at night?
As practical jokes go, this one almost barely disqualifies as a harmless prank: the entirety of their plan consists of jumping inside the station wagon driven to the lake by the narrator, flashing its lights and honking its horn. As far as pranks go, this one should hardly have the impact of being a ritual of manhood. But that's how things go, sometimes.
The realization that they are not pranking Tony because it is not Tony's car dawns slowly, but inexorably until it becomes clear that the practical joke was about as ill-advised as possible. The owner of the car is not unknown. He's not Tony Lovett, but rather a person described as a 'bad greasy character.' Just how bad quickly becomes apparently when this bad character quickly draws the boy into a fight that comes to an unexpected end when the narrator grabs a tire iron and bashes it upside the greasy guy's head. His fall to the ground is highly suggestive of only one conclusion: the narrator has just killed someone.
The key moment in the story, it can be argued, occurs next. The narrator, Jeff, and Digby do not immediately flee in the face of the possibility of homicide. Instead, they turn their attention to the greasy character's girlfriend, now alone and vulnerable and utterly at the mercy of the skyrocketing levels of adrenaline and testosterone shooting through the still not fully developed bodies of the three apparently quite average, ordinary and relatively harmless suburbanites. It is not the kind of mercy that is desirable as the three move to work out their mixture of aggression and sexuality on the girl.
The arrival of another car quickly causes a dispersal of the would-be gangbangers, however. The narrator chooses to escape by driving straight into the lake where the night just gets weirder. What should his brief underwater getaway bring him into contact with but an actual dead body which sends him scurrying away in terror? The dispersal results in the congealing of shared boyhood nightmare as the trio manage to meet up again in the woods, hidden from the suddenly gazing eye of reconstituted greasy character. Turns out he was merely knocked unconscious and not dead.
While that twisting of circumstances is most certainly a good thing, what happens next is not. The reawakened greasy character and his buddies who drove up in the other car descend upon the narrator's mom's station wagon as if it were the girl that the narrator, Jeff, and Digby were about to attack just a few minutes earlier. By the time they are done, they station wagon is barely recognizable. Sated from the exercise of their own pent-up aggression and sexual tension, the greasy character and the vandals leave the lot only to be very shortly replaced by yet another car.
Out of this vehicle stumble two young women who have clearly been experimenting with some illegal substance or two. When the boys appear out of the darkness of the woods, one of the girls looks at them and vocalizes the irony that has been pervasive since the story commenced: 'You guys look like some pretty bad characters.' The girls then offer up some of their stash of drugs to the trio, but the narrator recoils from his offer just like he recoiled from the corpse in the water. What had once seemed so tempting in its debauchery and corruption has become much clearer to the narrator as something to run from rather than toward as he admits that he is on the verge of crying.
Barely able to manage the transmission back into the Drive position, the station wagon heads back into the safer and more predictable and comforting confines of suburbia, carrying three men who have become more experienced in the ways of the world than the three boys who had arrived at Greasy Lake not that long ago.
Most teenagers go through a point in their lives where they want to step out from what a successful member of society is supposed to be. During these teens' phases, they experiment with different elements, such as drugs, drinking, and sexual exploration and become involved in various mischievous activities. As a result, teenagers grow up and figure out what route they want to take in life. Do they stay promiscuous, or do they mature and learn from their mistakes? It is proven that many teens first experiment during their high school years:
Greasy Lake Full Story Book
Results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRLBS), found that 72.5% of high school students had at least one drink of alcohol during their lifetime, and 41.8% had at least one drink in the past 30 days. Additionally, this study found that 46.3% of students had tried cigarettes, and 19.5% had smoked in the past 30 days. Also, 36.8% of students had used marijuana in their lifetime, and 20.8% had used it in the past 30 days. Furthermore, this study found that 46% of students had sexual intercourse in their lifetime. (Dunn 24)
In the short story 'Greasy Lake,' T.C. Boyle presents a group of male teenagers who go through the phase detailed above. Toward the end of the story, the protagonist makes a decision about what route to take in life because of an epiphany he has while was going through this common teenage phase.
During the story, the unnamed protagonist and his friends try to emulate what typical 'bad boys' do. While trying to act 'bad,' the boys figure out that they are not cut out for the rebel lifestyle. Boyle's main point in the story is that being cool does not necessarily mean acting tough and getting into all types of trouble. Throughout the story, the teens go through a series of unfortunate events.
The story opens with the protagonist recalling his past of being a 'bad boy.' There is foreshadowing in the beginning of the story when the narrators states, 'There was a time when . . . it was good to be bad . . . We were all dangerous characters then' (Charters 164). Readers eventually find out that the narrator changes his perspective about the lake and past decisions he has made. Then, the protagonist states that he and his friends loved being bad and going against the norm. They listened to rock and roll music, smoked cigarettes, did drugs, drank, and spent time with girls at the notorious meet-up spot, Greasy Lake, which was where all the cool kids went. This was the place to be:
We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich sent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature. (Charters 165)
Here, the author compares the naturalness of teenagers doing mischievous things such as drinking and watching girls undress to crickets and frogs making noise at night.
One night in June, the protagonist picks up his friends, Digby and Jeff, 'two dangerous characters' (Charters 165). They first go to a few bars, but it soon gets late, and all the bars are in the process of closing. Drunk and high, they decide to go to Greasy Lake. According to a study, 'More teenagers start drinking and smoking cigarettes and marijuana in June and July than in any other months, U.S. health officials say' (Reinberg).
When they arrive at their destination, Digby thought he saw their friend, Tony Lovett, and his car. The protagonist starts to honk the car horn and flashes its lights at the other car to try and trick Tony into thinking they were state troopers and ultimately scare him. They soon find out it is not Tony. Instead, it is a very angry, tough guy. The narrator describes him as 'a man of action' (Charters 166), which isn't a comforting image. This man starts a brawl with the protagonist and his friends, and it is not pretty. The protagonist chips his tooth, and he and his friends have gashes on their bodies. A1 dvd ripper. The protagonist said, 'I was terrified. Blood was beating in my ears, my hands were shaking, my heart turning over like a dirt bike in the wrong gear' (Charters 166).
The worst of all was that the protagonist had lost the key to the car. He said 'and that the lost ignition key was my grail and my salvation' (Charters 166). Here, the protagonist is saying that the car keys are his only way out of Greasy Lake. Without the keys, he is doomed and has to stay there. They decide to fight back with a tire iron, and their attacker eventually lies on the floor, unconscious. The main character was afraid that he and his friends may have killed the man. After seeing what had happened to her boyfriend, the attacker's girlfriend came out of the car and started screaming in fear. The protagonist and his friends decided to take advantage of her and sexually harass her. A car pulls up and a man starts screaming at them, and they end up fleeing the scene by running.
If they had not been so intoxicated, they would have figured out that the car was not their friend's car and would not have honked and flashed lights at a random car. This is one of the first moments in the short story when the protagonist figures out that he is not cut out for this lifestyle. When someone is intoxicated, they do not act like an upstanding citizen of society and probably will get into fights and other trouble.
Greasy Lake Full Story Movie
If someone provokes us while we're drunk, we don't take other factors into account, such as the consequences of rising to the bait. This can lead to violent reactions from people who would usually shrug things off . . . Alcohol also reduces anxiety, which can be one of the reasons we enjoy drinking. But, according to Professor McMurran, anxiety actually protects us by telling us to avoid or escape certain situations. When we're drunk, this warning system doesn't work and this can put us in dangerous or confrontational situations. (Drinkaware)
After fleeing the scene of the fight and potential rape, the protagonist decides to hide in the lake in case the police arrive at the scene. While alone in the lake, he finds a dead man floating and wonders what happened to him. The protagonist said, 'I blundered into something. Something unspeakable, obscene, something soft, wet, moss-grown' (Charters 168). He was probably just like the protagonist. The dead man acted tough and cool but most likely ended up in a fight and was murdered. The finding of the dead body sets up the epiphany the boy has after coming to the lake that night. He is frightened and this part of the story really makes him think about gravitating toward the side of growing up. He sees that if he stays immature and keeps girls, drugs, and alcohol as his top priorities in life, he will end up like the dead man in the lake.
Aug 13, 2013 Digital Explication of the short story Greasy Lake by T.C. At night, we went up to Greasy Lake. Through the centre of town, up the strip, past the housing developments and shopping malls, streetlights giving way to the thin streaming illumination of the headlights, trees crowding the asphalt in a black unbroken wall: that was the way out to Greasy Lake.
Trouble begins with the trio makes a far more miscalculated misidentification: that of thinking that a car parked up at Greasy Lake belongs to their friend Tony Lovett. As boys—not to mention some more mature and experienced men who should admittedly know better—will do, they act on their initial impulse to prank Tony as he is—or so they think—in the middle of a romantic tryst. After all, what other reason exists for being at Greasy Lake at night?
As practical jokes go, this one almost barely disqualifies as a harmless prank: the entirety of their plan consists of jumping inside the station wagon driven to the lake by the narrator, flashing its lights and honking its horn. As far as pranks go, this one should hardly have the impact of being a ritual of manhood. But that's how things go, sometimes.
The realization that they are not pranking Tony because it is not Tony's car dawns slowly, but inexorably until it becomes clear that the practical joke was about as ill-advised as possible. The owner of the car is not unknown. He's not Tony Lovett, but rather a person described as a 'bad greasy character.' Just how bad quickly becomes apparently when this bad character quickly draws the boy into a fight that comes to an unexpected end when the narrator grabs a tire iron and bashes it upside the greasy guy's head. His fall to the ground is highly suggestive of only one conclusion: the narrator has just killed someone.
The key moment in the story, it can be argued, occurs next. The narrator, Jeff, and Digby do not immediately flee in the face of the possibility of homicide. Instead, they turn their attention to the greasy character's girlfriend, now alone and vulnerable and utterly at the mercy of the skyrocketing levels of adrenaline and testosterone shooting through the still not fully developed bodies of the three apparently quite average, ordinary and relatively harmless suburbanites. It is not the kind of mercy that is desirable as the three move to work out their mixture of aggression and sexuality on the girl.
The arrival of another car quickly causes a dispersal of the would-be gangbangers, however. The narrator chooses to escape by driving straight into the lake where the night just gets weirder. What should his brief underwater getaway bring him into contact with but an actual dead body which sends him scurrying away in terror? The dispersal results in the congealing of shared boyhood nightmare as the trio manage to meet up again in the woods, hidden from the suddenly gazing eye of reconstituted greasy character. Turns out he was merely knocked unconscious and not dead.
While that twisting of circumstances is most certainly a good thing, what happens next is not. The reawakened greasy character and his buddies who drove up in the other car descend upon the narrator's mom's station wagon as if it were the girl that the narrator, Jeff, and Digby were about to attack just a few minutes earlier. By the time they are done, they station wagon is barely recognizable. Sated from the exercise of their own pent-up aggression and sexual tension, the greasy character and the vandals leave the lot only to be very shortly replaced by yet another car.
Out of this vehicle stumble two young women who have clearly been experimenting with some illegal substance or two. When the boys appear out of the darkness of the woods, one of the girls looks at them and vocalizes the irony that has been pervasive since the story commenced: 'You guys look like some pretty bad characters.' The girls then offer up some of their stash of drugs to the trio, but the narrator recoils from his offer just like he recoiled from the corpse in the water. What had once seemed so tempting in its debauchery and corruption has become much clearer to the narrator as something to run from rather than toward as he admits that he is on the verge of crying.
Barely able to manage the transmission back into the Drive position, the station wagon heads back into the safer and more predictable and comforting confines of suburbia, carrying three men who have become more experienced in the ways of the world than the three boys who had arrived at Greasy Lake not that long ago.
Most teenagers go through a point in their lives where they want to step out from what a successful member of society is supposed to be. During these teens' phases, they experiment with different elements, such as drugs, drinking, and sexual exploration and become involved in various mischievous activities. As a result, teenagers grow up and figure out what route they want to take in life. Do they stay promiscuous, or do they mature and learn from their mistakes? It is proven that many teens first experiment during their high school years:
Greasy Lake Full Story Book
Results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRLBS), found that 72.5% of high school students had at least one drink of alcohol during their lifetime, and 41.8% had at least one drink in the past 30 days. Additionally, this study found that 46.3% of students had tried cigarettes, and 19.5% had smoked in the past 30 days. Also, 36.8% of students had used marijuana in their lifetime, and 20.8% had used it in the past 30 days. Furthermore, this study found that 46% of students had sexual intercourse in their lifetime. (Dunn 24)
In the short story 'Greasy Lake,' T.C. Boyle presents a group of male teenagers who go through the phase detailed above. Toward the end of the story, the protagonist makes a decision about what route to take in life because of an epiphany he has while was going through this common teenage phase.
During the story, the unnamed protagonist and his friends try to emulate what typical 'bad boys' do. While trying to act 'bad,' the boys figure out that they are not cut out for the rebel lifestyle. Boyle's main point in the story is that being cool does not necessarily mean acting tough and getting into all types of trouble. Throughout the story, the teens go through a series of unfortunate events.
The story opens with the protagonist recalling his past of being a 'bad boy.' There is foreshadowing in the beginning of the story when the narrators states, 'There was a time when . . . it was good to be bad . . . We were all dangerous characters then' (Charters 164). Readers eventually find out that the narrator changes his perspective about the lake and past decisions he has made. Then, the protagonist states that he and his friends loved being bad and going against the norm. They listened to rock and roll music, smoked cigarettes, did drugs, drank, and spent time with girls at the notorious meet-up spot, Greasy Lake, which was where all the cool kids went. This was the place to be:
We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich sent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature. (Charters 165)
Here, the author compares the naturalness of teenagers doing mischievous things such as drinking and watching girls undress to crickets and frogs making noise at night.
One night in June, the protagonist picks up his friends, Digby and Jeff, 'two dangerous characters' (Charters 165). They first go to a few bars, but it soon gets late, and all the bars are in the process of closing. Drunk and high, they decide to go to Greasy Lake. According to a study, 'More teenagers start drinking and smoking cigarettes and marijuana in June and July than in any other months, U.S. health officials say' (Reinberg).
When they arrive at their destination, Digby thought he saw their friend, Tony Lovett, and his car. The protagonist starts to honk the car horn and flashes its lights at the other car to try and trick Tony into thinking they were state troopers and ultimately scare him. They soon find out it is not Tony. Instead, it is a very angry, tough guy. The narrator describes him as 'a man of action' (Charters 166), which isn't a comforting image. This man starts a brawl with the protagonist and his friends, and it is not pretty. The protagonist chips his tooth, and he and his friends have gashes on their bodies. A1 dvd ripper. The protagonist said, 'I was terrified. Blood was beating in my ears, my hands were shaking, my heart turning over like a dirt bike in the wrong gear' (Charters 166).
The worst of all was that the protagonist had lost the key to the car. He said 'and that the lost ignition key was my grail and my salvation' (Charters 166). Here, the protagonist is saying that the car keys are his only way out of Greasy Lake. Without the keys, he is doomed and has to stay there. They decide to fight back with a tire iron, and their attacker eventually lies on the floor, unconscious. The main character was afraid that he and his friends may have killed the man. After seeing what had happened to her boyfriend, the attacker's girlfriend came out of the car and started screaming in fear. The protagonist and his friends decided to take advantage of her and sexually harass her. A car pulls up and a man starts screaming at them, and they end up fleeing the scene by running.
If they had not been so intoxicated, they would have figured out that the car was not their friend's car and would not have honked and flashed lights at a random car. This is one of the first moments in the short story when the protagonist figures out that he is not cut out for this lifestyle. When someone is intoxicated, they do not act like an upstanding citizen of society and probably will get into fights and other trouble.
Greasy Lake Full Story Movie
If someone provokes us while we're drunk, we don't take other factors into account, such as the consequences of rising to the bait. This can lead to violent reactions from people who would usually shrug things off . . . Alcohol also reduces anxiety, which can be one of the reasons we enjoy drinking. But, according to Professor McMurran, anxiety actually protects us by telling us to avoid or escape certain situations. When we're drunk, this warning system doesn't work and this can put us in dangerous or confrontational situations. (Drinkaware)
After fleeing the scene of the fight and potential rape, the protagonist decides to hide in the lake in case the police arrive at the scene. While alone in the lake, he finds a dead man floating and wonders what happened to him. The protagonist said, 'I blundered into something. Something unspeakable, obscene, something soft, wet, moss-grown' (Charters 168). He was probably just like the protagonist. The dead man acted tough and cool but most likely ended up in a fight and was murdered. The finding of the dead body sets up the epiphany the boy has after coming to the lake that night. He is frightened and this part of the story really makes him think about gravitating toward the side of growing up. He sees that if he stays immature and keeps girls, drugs, and alcohol as his top priorities in life, he will end up like the dead man in the lake.
After hearing his attacker scream 'the greasy bad character was laying into the side of my mother's Bel Air like an avenging demon, his shadow riding up the trunks of the trees' (Charters 169), the protagonist thinks to himself, 'My jaws ached, my knee throbbed, my coccyx was on fire. I contemplated suicide, wondered if I'd need bridgework, scraped the recesses of my brain for some sort of excuse to give my parents—a tree had fallen on the car' (Charters 169). Here, the character regrets going to the lake. He will be in huge trouble when he goes home and shows his mom that her car is completely damaged. He is even thinking of making up a fictitious story about a tree falling on the car. He does not even want to be an adult about the situation and tell his mom the truth, yet he wants to do grown-up things such as having sex and drinking. However, he cannot even do the simplest grown-up thing, telling the truth. In this instance, the reader is blinded by his immaturity.
As readers, we see a huge change in the main character at the end of the story. He has an epiphany after being in the lake and suffering damages. Maybe he should not try to act so tough and bad, and maybe he should mature and act as an ideal 19-year-old. All he wants to do is go home where he is safe from the 'monsters' that reside in Greasy Lake.
That morning after all of those crazy events that took place, two women come up to him and his friends asking if they want to drink and do drugs with them. The two women said 'hey, you guys look like some pretty bad characters – been fightin', huh?' (Charters 171). Little do the girls know, the boys are not bad. The main character turns them down. This is a huge moment in the story because before, when trying to act all big, bad, and tough, the main character would have said yes. After all of that, he decides that partying with these girls would be an extremely bad thing. Along with asking to party with them, the girls ask if the protagonist and his friends have seen the girls' friend. None of the boys said they have, but the protagonist thought to himself that their friend was dead and lying in the river. He was terrified of this, and he did not have the courage to tell them about the dead body.
Greasy Lake Full Story Summary
In conclusion, I believe that because of those horrible events that took place that night, the protagonist will become a much better person in his coming years. Lilo and stitch sandwich stacker unblocked 6969. All of his mistakes lead him to his epiphany at the lake, which is a great thing. The quote in the beginning of the story indeed shows that the protagonist and his friends changed for the better. Boyle writes 'We were all dangerous characters then' (164). William Berman summed up how mistakes lead to success perfectly, 'Making mistakes is not only part of human nature, but an important part of how we learn' (Berman 115). I believe this quote is perfect for the protagonist's journey.
Works Cited
Greasy Lake Story Full Text
- 'Alcohol and Aggression.' Alcohol and Aggression. Drinkaware, n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
- Berman, William. 'When Will They Ever Learn? Learning And Teaching From Mistakes In The Clinical Context.' Clinical Law Review 13.1 (2006): 115-141. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
- Charters, Ann. 'Greasy Lake.' The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. New York: St. Martin's, 1983. 164-71. Print.
- Dunn, Michael, and Cathy Kitts. 'Effects of Youth Assets on Adolescent Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana Use, and Sexual Behavior.' Journal of Alcohol & Drug Education, Dec. 2011. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
- Reinberg, Steven. 'Summer Is Peak Time for Teens to Try Drugs, Alcohol: Report.' Summer Is Peak Time for Teens to Try Drugs, Alcohol: Report. Health Day, July 2012. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
