T. C. Boyle's Greasy Lake

Characterizing Setting T.C. Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” employs use of setting to contextualize the events of the narrative. The characters, Digby, Jeff, and the narrator are teens in the peak of rebellion, three thrill seekers looking to break up the monotony of their lives with their misadventures at the “Greasy Lake”, a refuse-filled pond that is a hub of drug use and crime. On one such excursion, the group encounters a man who typifies what they believe themselves to be, a “Bad greasy character”. Their altercation, set on the backdrop of Greasy Lake, and their actions, horrible as they are, fit within the context of the Lake. Likewise, as the night goes wrong, more of the lake is revealed, the reader’s impression shifts to horror This feeling …show more content…
As the narrator enters the lake, he beings feel trapped by it, “The ooze sucking at my sneakers. (Boyle 5)” This contrasts with the voluntary attraction he had felt to the lake and the life of “badness” and to his instinct to escape into the lake, because he can no longer leave, if he did, he would be spotted by the men. In the midst of the turmoil of his escape, the narrator stumbles upon a the dead body of a man floating in the lake, another “greasy character.” The narrator recoils in horror, but trips and falls onto the corpse. At this moment, the narrator realizes how repugnant the lake and “badness” truly are. When the narrator emerges from the lake, beaten and filthy, his car destroyed, he repeats “this was nature” changing the meaning. The lake, and the body, are the consequence of “badness”, and the prophecy of their lives as adults. At this point, the lake represents the agony experienced in their attempt to rebel, and as their dedicated to badness wanes, so does the romanticism of the lake, and the narrator ceases his attraction to