greasy lake
“Greasy Lake”
In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake,” the literary devices applied are rising action and climax. The many accounts of rising action and climax lead the reader to the plot. This story is about three “bad boys” that are forced to mature due to the many events they encounter in one night. At the beginning of this story these three boys want to be seen as “bad characters,” however, by the end of the story, the boys find out what it really means to be “bad.” When the girls tell them they look like bad character, they no longer feel this is a compliment. They have just endured a sequence of traumatic events that being bad is not what they expected it to be.
Digby, Jeff, and the narrator are riding around town looking for something to do. They come up empty handed. “It was 2:00 A.M.; the bars were closing. There was nothing to do but take a bottle of lemon-flavored gin up to Greasy Lake” (77). The first mistake the boys make that lead them to the climax is when Digby thinks he sees Tony Lovett’s car. Digby shouts, “Hey, that’s Tony Lovett’s car! Hey!” Running into Tony this night would change their lives forever. The boys would find out just how “bad” they were and where it will get them.
Another detrimental mistake that Boyle points out is the fact that the narrator lost his keys. “The first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate, was losing my grip on the keys” (78). Losing the keys causes the boys not to be able to get away when they need to. This also sets the narrator into panic mode. The narrator compares losing the keys as “a tactical error, as damaging and irreversible in its way as Westmoreland’s decision to dig in at Khe Sanh” (78).
In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “Greasy Lake,” the literary devices applied are rising action and climax. The many accounts of rising action and climax lead the reader to the plot. This story is about three “bad boys” that are forced to mature due to the many events they encounter in one night. At the beginning of this story these three boys want to be seen as “bad characters,” however, by the end of the story, the boys find out what it really means to be “bad.” When the girls tell them they look like bad character, they no longer feel this is a compliment. They have just endured a sequence of traumatic events that being bad is not what they expected it to be.
Digby, Jeff, and the narrator are riding around town looking for something to do. They come up empty handed. “It was 2:00 A.M.; the bars were closing. There was nothing to do but take a bottle of lemon-flavored gin up to Greasy Lake” (77). The first mistake the boys make that lead them to the climax is when Digby thinks he sees Tony Lovett’s car. Digby shouts, “Hey, that’s Tony Lovett’s car! Hey!” Running into Tony this night would change their lives forever. The boys would find out just how “bad” they were and where it will get them.
Another detrimental mistake that Boyle points out is the fact that the narrator lost his keys. “The first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate, was losing my grip on the keys” (78). Losing the keys causes the boys not to be able to get away when they need to. This also sets the narrator into panic mode. The narrator compares losing the keys as “a tactical error, as damaging and irreversible in its way as Westmoreland’s decision to dig in at Khe Sanh” (78).