Vietnam War vs. Greasy Lake War in T.C. Boyle's Short Story "Greasy La

In a short story of “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle points out the characters from going “Good to be Bad” where everything happened in Greasy Lake. It all started with the main characters, The Narrator, Digby, and Jeff, being bad characters and drinking underage. One night they all went up to Greasy Lake, and they did any terrible act that was possible. Later that night, they were driving and Digby spotted Tony Lovett’s car. The story gets worse when the narrator loses his keys, and realized it was not Tony’s car. Digby and Jeff were involved to fight off the bad character and the narrator had no choice but to use a tire iron he kept under the driver’s seat and smash the bad character head. Another car shows up to scene and everyone ran away, once the narrator ended up in the lake and found the dead body floating. Right where

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.

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 “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

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.

These bad kids with leather jackets, toothpicks in their mouths, and shades at all times. Tough, scary looking boys, stereotyping what “bad” is and that they do nothing but crazy, stupid things. “Bad” is what all boys are, they are up to no good, they drink, rape, and fight. As lost as these kids are, they feel like they belong nowhere, but they find a place, a place called Greasy Lake and there they want to find an escape. Realize that Greasy Lake is not all that fun anymore, these boys pretend to be rebels to be crazy teens, keeping the stereotypes about teens alive. With that, they start to do horrible events, start fighting a stranger, raping a woman, and destroying their car. Scared and afraid they all disappear to the forest and end up

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,

He, obviously, is the narrator, and the person whom we see the story through. He gives us his opinions on the matters at hand, and we see the book through his viewpoint. The traits described above allow him to be such a great narrator, for he can get people to confide in him, and relay this information to the reader.

“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.

“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.

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.

In TC Boyle’s story “Greasy Lake” the meaning of the story could be taken in different ways depending on how you see the story. In the story, we learn about three teenage boys who think doing terrible things is good. Throughout the story we learn just how much these boys don’t care and realize that their consequences will be bad in the end. By analyzing character, symbolism and setting in TC Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” we can see the theme of having a bad character is not the way of living life.

As most of the people in American spent time thinking about clothing and feeding themselves and their families, the rarely spend time thinking about philosophical issues. Tim O’Brien says that he jars people to look into important things, meaning that he makes people look into the deeper meaning of the issues reflected in his novels instead of focusing on the basic issues alone. This paper will analyze the important aspects that are reflected in the Novel In the Lake of the Woods and the article The Vietnam in Me by Tim O’Brien.

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.