Greasy Lake Character Analysis Essay
Greasy Lake Character Analysis
The narrator of T.C. Boyle 's "Greasy Lake" appears to be the ultimate rebel upon first glance. The unnamed main character goes out of his way to appear "bad" to his friends and anyone around him. The narrator explains that he wore leather jackets, drove his parents ' station wagon and drank gin and grape juice to produce the effect of being intimidating and cool to others. By the end of the story when the narrator has the chance to continue his false image of being a badass, he decides to take another route. I wanted to write about the narrator about Greasy Lake because I found him to be really pretentious and agravating. His character is shown when he says: "We were bad. We read Andre Gide and struck …show more content…
elaborate poses to show that we didn 't give a shit about anything." This quote is also significant because it sums up his actions by pretending to be bad to the point of having to be elaborate in getting the message across. The narrator is round because he does all these different things to appear rebellious, like sniffing glue and "...what somebody claimed was cocaine." I would also say that he is dynamic because he changes at the end of the story. The first sign of the narrator 's change appears when he discovers the body in the lake. Before this happened he and his friends were flashing the lights of their car at another car, then they get in a fight with a "...very bad greasy character" and then they try to rape a girl. When the narrator swam through the Greasy Lake to get away he found a dead body,Al, and from then on the narrator begins to stray from putting on a show of being "bad." All he wants to do is get back to the car and leave Greasy Lake; he doesn 't try to start everything up again or do something worse than before. When the narrator and his friends regroup they don 't express any signs of being proud of what they had done. When the narrator finds the keys in the grass he describes them as being"...jewels in the first tapering shaft of sunlight." This is a sign that the narrator truly wants to leave Greasy Lake because he sees the simple appearance of keys as something precious. This could also be symbolic of the narrator wanting to get away from the person he was trying to be. The most significant sign of the narrator 's character was towards the end when the drunk girl looking for Al (decomposing in the lake) asks is he and his friends wanted to party with her and her friend.
The narrator expresses character development when he says: "I wanted to get out of the car and retch, I wanted to go home to my parents ' house and crawl into bed." He then says that he felt like he was about to cry when she asks if they wanted to do drugs with the girl and her friend. In the end he didn 't stay with the girls which was something he would have done if he truly was as "bad" as he thought himself to …show more content…
be. The author presents this character as being far from anything good or wholesome. He makes the character out to be flawed and desperate to be rebellious that the narrator really has no choice but to change from his usual ways. I think the author also made the narrator change because it wouldn 't be satisfying for the reader if he had stayed with the girls, it would have made the narrator flat and disappointing. But since the narrator 's character was altered at the end it showed that the narrator was capable of change.
The young men’s reaffirmation of their newfound enlightenment comes in the form of a second chance offering to fulfill the “real bad character" persona that they so desired before (Gale ). As the boys collect their thoughts and reflect on the prior nights events, two girls in a Mustang pull into the parking lot. They are no doubt looking for the biker who now resides, peacefully bobbing, in the waters of Greasy Lake. The girls from the Mustang represent another opportunity to fulfill “the drunken excitement for which they have been searching unsuccessfully all evening" (Bull). Before them stand easy pickings, girls in “tight jeans [and] stiletto heels" bearing a handful of pills and temptation in which they were in frantic search for one long night before, but with the night’s events still fresh in their minds, Digby declines the offer (Boyle ).
Although Digby is the only character to verbally denounce the temptation, the conciliatory silence of the other two characters is enough to lead the reader to believe a transformation has occurred in all three.
In addition to the narrator’s pacifying silence, agreement is revealed in the form of a nonverbal action when he slips the “car in gear…creeping towards the highway" (Boyle 929). His answer is final and transformation is now complete. The “sheen of sun on the lake" represents a renewal of life’s opportunity, as well as a confirmation of it, for they have passed their first test (Boyle 929). Their moment of enlightened transformation has come, and they have taken stock in its message their transformation is now
absolute.
“Greasy Lake" is more than just a story of one night in the life of three teenagers rather, it is a story of revelation. The narrator submerges into the dirty water of Greasy Lake in retreat and emerges with a cleansed sense of maturity and understanding. The series of mistakes and near consequences of the night’s events are now permanently etched into the subconscious of the three young men and will forever influence their future actions and behavior. Boyle’s tale of transformation has a mesmerizing effect on readers who can recount and relate to that defined moment of enlightenment that shaped their lives and brought them to their current state of maturity.
Works Cited
Bull, Malcolm. “Corn." London Review of Books. January 1994: 19-20. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
Gale Research. “’Greasy Lake’, by T. Coraghessan Boyle." Characters in Twentieth-Century Literature. 1995: 1-3. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
McCaffery, Larry. “Lusty Dreamers in the Suburban Jungle." The New York Times Book Review. June 1985: 15-16. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
Walker, Michael. “Boyle’s ‘Greasy Lake’ and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism." Studies in Short Fiction. Spring 1994: 247-255. Literature Online. Chadwyck-Healey. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
The narrator of T.C. Boyle 's "Greasy Lake" appears to be the ultimate rebel upon first glance. The unnamed main character goes out of his way to appear "bad" to his friends and anyone around him. The narrator explains that he wore leather jackets, drove his parents ' station wagon and drank gin and grape juice to produce the effect of being intimidating and cool to others. By the end of the story when the narrator has the chance to continue his false image of being a badass, he decides to take another route. I wanted to write about the narrator about Greasy Lake because I found him to be really pretentious and agravating. His character is shown when he says: "We were bad. We read Andre Gide and struck …show more content…
elaborate poses to show that we didn 't give a shit about anything." This quote is also significant because it sums up his actions by pretending to be bad to the point of having to be elaborate in getting the message across. The narrator is round because he does all these different things to appear rebellious, like sniffing glue and "...what somebody claimed was cocaine." I would also say that he is dynamic because he changes at the end of the story. The first sign of the narrator 's change appears when he discovers the body in the lake. Before this happened he and his friends were flashing the lights of their car at another car, then they get in a fight with a "...very bad greasy character" and then they try to rape a girl. When the narrator swam through the Greasy Lake to get away he found a dead body,Al, and from then on the narrator begins to stray from putting on a show of being "bad." All he wants to do is get back to the car and leave Greasy Lake; he doesn 't try to start everything up again or do something worse than before. When the narrator and his friends regroup they don 't express any signs of being proud of what they had done. When the narrator finds the keys in the grass he describes them as being"...jewels in the first tapering shaft of sunlight." This is a sign that the narrator truly wants to leave Greasy Lake because he sees the simple appearance of keys as something precious. This could also be symbolic of the narrator wanting to get away from the person he was trying to be. The most significant sign of the narrator 's character was towards the end when the drunk girl looking for Al (decomposing in the lake) asks is he and his friends wanted to party with her and her friend.
The narrator expresses character development when he says: "I wanted to get out of the car and retch, I wanted to go home to my parents ' house and crawl into bed." He then says that he felt like he was about to cry when she asks if they wanted to do drugs with the girl and her friend. In the end he didn 't stay with the girls which was something he would have done if he truly was as "bad" as he thought himself to …show more content…
be. The author presents this character as being far from anything good or wholesome. He makes the character out to be flawed and desperate to be rebellious that the narrator really has no choice but to change from his usual ways. I think the author also made the narrator change because it wouldn 't be satisfying for the reader if he had stayed with the girls, it would have made the narrator flat and disappointing. But since the narrator 's character was altered at the end it showed that the narrator was capable of change.
The young men’s reaffirmation of their newfound enlightenment comes in the form of a second chance offering to fulfill the “real bad character" persona that they so desired before (Gale ). As the boys collect their thoughts and reflect on the prior nights events, two girls in a Mustang pull into the parking lot. They are no doubt looking for the biker who now resides, peacefully bobbing, in the waters of Greasy Lake. The girls from the Mustang represent another opportunity to fulfill “the drunken excitement for which they have been searching unsuccessfully all evening" (Bull). Before them stand easy pickings, girls in “tight jeans [and] stiletto heels" bearing a handful of pills and temptation in which they were in frantic search for one long night before, but with the night’s events still fresh in their minds, Digby declines the offer (Boyle ).
Although Digby is the only character to verbally denounce the temptation, the conciliatory silence of the other two characters is enough to lead the reader to believe a transformation has occurred in all three.
In addition to the narrator’s pacifying silence, agreement is revealed in the form of a nonverbal action when he slips the “car in gear…creeping towards the highway" (Boyle 929). His answer is final and transformation is now complete. The “sheen of sun on the lake" represents a renewal of life’s opportunity, as well as a confirmation of it, for they have passed their first test (Boyle 929). Their moment of enlightened transformation has come, and they have taken stock in its message their transformation is now
absolute.
“Greasy Lake" is more than just a story of one night in the life of three teenagers rather, it is a story of revelation. The narrator submerges into the dirty water of Greasy Lake in retreat and emerges with a cleansed sense of maturity and understanding. The series of mistakes and near consequences of the night’s events are now permanently etched into the subconscious of the three young men and will forever influence their future actions and behavior. Boyle’s tale of transformation has a mesmerizing effect on readers who can recount and relate to that defined moment of enlightenment that shaped their lives and brought them to their current state of maturity.
Works Cited
Bull, Malcolm. “Corn." London Review of Books. January 1994: 19-20. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
Gale Research. “’Greasy Lake’, by T. Coraghessan Boyle." Characters in Twentieth-Century Literature. 1995: 1-3. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
McCaffery, Larry. “Lusty Dreamers in the Suburban Jungle." The New York Times Book Review. June 1985: 15-16. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006
Walker, Michael. “Boyle’s ‘Greasy Lake’ and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism." Studies in Short Fiction. Spring 1994: 247-255. Literature Online. Chadwyck-Healey. Brookhaven College Library, Farmers Branch, TX. 4 April 2006