Greasy Lake Summary

JAIME JAMES
RESPONSE PAPER 1
FEBRUARY 4, 2006
BONNIE TENSEN
MORE THAN JUST A LAKE
In "Greasy Lake" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the setting is a character that changes throughout the story, much as the narrator changes and grows through his experiences. Greasy Lake is a place where good boys go to learn to be bad. This story is about a time "when you cultivated decadence like a taste." (Boyle 144) You can tell by the first few paragraphs that you must pay great attention to the setting in this story to fully grasp what Boyle is trying to convey.
Greasy Lake is a world apart from the town the narrator spends his days in. During the day he would act as his parents expect, and at night, he could escape to the other worldly Greasy Lake and
be bad. It's a place where the good boys go to learn from the bad. The narrator says "we drank gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, Bali Hai. We were nineteen. We were bad." (144) They tried to act like they didn't care, and one way they did this was going to Greasy Lake. In describing the way to Greasy Lake "up the strip, past the housing developments and shopping malls, street lights giving way to the thin streaming illumination of the headlights, trees crowding the asphalt in a black unbroken wall…" you get the feeling of being transported from one character -the ho-hum daily life where everyone works nine to five- to another -the lake itself, the antagonist of the story. (144)
Greasy Lake was once a beautiful, clean place, as we can tell from the Indian name, Wakan.
Boyle makes it sound as though it was not good the way it was, and it is better now that it is "…fetid and murky…mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires." (144) The lake has now gained acceptance of the bad boys of this time period, the lake is worthy of becoming their hangout. The narrator indicates many times throughout the story that they go there specifically because of the bad things that happen there. They go to the lake because they "wanted to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze…drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars." (144) To indicate the ugliness of the environment, the narrator describes a "single ravaged island a hundred yards from shore, so stripped of vegetation it looked as the air force had strafed it." (144) He also describes "the dirt lot with tufts of weed and washboard corrugations" and "dark, rank, mysterious nighttime grass" that can give the reader the feeling of a dilapidated old place, unkempt, neglected but in a good way. (145) The narrator describes a motorcycle as "the exoskeleton of some gaunt chrome
insect."(145)
In two places in this story, the narrator says "This was nature." (144, 150) Nature and the environment play a large role in this story.
Nature feels and creates the fear that is felt by the narrator and the other characters. The narrator describes "fog on the lake, insects chirring eerily, and felt the tug of fear, felt the darkness opening up inside me like a set of jaws." (150) The fog on the lake indicates the darkness and the mysteriousness of the night, and gives us an insight into the narrators mind. Another phrase that creates fear in the setting is "feculent undergrowth at the lakes edge", which indicates mystery and darkness. As the narrator pushes through the brush and the insects you can feel the mystery intensifying, you can feel his heart beating faster, and the setting grows more mysterious along with him. (147) The personification of the night "puddled around my feet" leads the reader to feel that nature is working with the reader to protect him from the greasers that are ready to beat him up, ready to fight for the "fox" that the narrator raped. (145) The woods that assist the narrator in hiding on the far side of the lake further personify nature in Boyle's "Greasy Lake. " The insects indicate the mystery of the story by their actions, becoming quiet at pertinent moments, as if they are listening to the actions of the other characters. Chirping and buzzing and humming as the story intensifies. As the narrator runs across the parking lot, the insects' were
flying up at him, urging him along. As rocks are thrown at the narrator, the frogs fall silent. The frogs are helping to hide his location, as if their croaks would give him away.
Near the end of the story we see nature changing from dark and mysterious to light and almost cheerful. "When the eastern half of the sky went from black to cobalt and the trees began to separate themselves from the shadows…the birds had begun to take over for the crickets" this indicates that the mysteriousness is over. (150) We know also that the strange night air has washed away the sins of the narrator, and the morning has brought a new freshness to the lives of the narrator and his friends. When they see the "sheen of sun on the lake" and notice the "smell in the air, raw and sweet at the same time, the smell of the sun firing buds and opening blossoms" they know that there is a new beginning for them. (150) They must come out from the cover of the lake and face the reality so that they can move on.
"When Digby and Jeff emerged from the trees" the narrator can see that his friends are ravaged and torn, dirty, much like he must look. Nature has protected them and destroyed them. Night made it impossible for them to find the keys. Then night protected them after they committed their crimes. Now nature is showing them that it is time to move on, time to start anew and blossom, just as the new day starts.
Greasy Lake will never be the same for them again.