Ironic Circumstances in Greasy Lake by T.C. Boyle Essay

In the short stories, “Cons” by Jess Walter, “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, and “Killings” by Andres Dubus, the characters experience epiphanies. An epiphany is defined as a moment in the story where a character achieves realization, awareness or a feeling of knowledge after which events are seen through the prism of this new light in the story.

During the apex of the Vietnam War Tim O’Brien lived through one of the darkest events in the nation's history. The My Lai Massacre and his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) inspired O’Brien to create such a beautiful novel In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien achieves the themes of denial and trauma by his masterful use of setting, imagery, and conflict.

“Greasy Lake" by Tom Coraghessan Boyle, is the story of a group of adolescents, searching for the one situation that will proclaim them as bad boys and how their minds change. As the story begins, the narrator gives the impression that he feels he and the others boys should have taken notice of some obvious clues about themselves. These clues would have led them to the conclusion that they were far from the bad guys they wished to be. However, the oblivious teenagers ignore these obvious signs and continue in search of their goal.

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 “Greasy Lake,” T. Coraghessan Boyle uses setting to portray the theme of the journey that one goes on to transition from childhood to adulthood. At the beginning of the short story, “greasy lake” was seen as this fun place that “bad guys” went to hangout. They smoked cigarettes, drank liquor, and gave their best attempt at finding girls. By the end of the story, it was a completely different place. The speaker found a dead body, his buddies almost raped an innocent girl, he nearly ruined

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

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:

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.

Thus the narrator of the story, as an older and more mature man, tells the story as an introspective look back at his misadventures. The protagonist begins to gain some insight into his possible future while in the “primordial ooze” (Boyle, 119) of Greasy lake .After finding the floating body and dealing with the destruction of his mothers battered station wagon he is mre reflective of the situation he is in. The narrator, looking back at

In almost all stories, the main character or characters usually have many personal experiences that change their views in one way or another. Three good examples of this are Abuela Invents the Zero ,Little Women ,and Home .One of these stories has one major experience that quickly affects that character's views. Another story includes many small events and moments that in the end affect a certain character's views and habits. The last story shows how previous life experiences turnout to not only not benefit but actually hurt. Notice that there can be many different kinds of situations that have an influence on a character and can change a character for better or for worse.

Important Aspects in the Novel In the Lake of The Woods and The Vietnam in Me by Tim O’Brien

It is ironic that not only is the lake named Greasy Lake, but the individuals who hang out there are also referred to as being greasy characters as well. The 3 main characters find themselves surrounded by “dangerous” characters, and get stuck in the middle of a huge fight. As if things aren’t bad enough, the main characters then attempt to rape a girl that is with the man they just fought. Very soon after more people show up ready to join in the deviant behavior, all while in the presence of this dirty, disgusting lake. “I’d struck down one greasy character, and blundered into the waterlogged carcass of a second” (128). No matter what the main characters do, or how they react to the conflicts presented, they constantly find themselves in the presence of more greasy characters at the greasy lake.

Every well written story has three main characters; the hero, the villain, and the scapegoat, and while other characters help build up the plot and give the story the flow it needs, these expected written characters attract our attention. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley