Summary Of Greasy Lake

In the short story “Greasy Lake” the narrator, our protagonist, describes himself as a 19-year-old rebel, but as the story progresses, we learn how it is all a façade to try to be like the rest of kids his age. What started off as a joke to who he thought was his friend Tony Lovett, turned out to be a life lesson that would crash down his false image of a bad boy. A series of events trigger his common sense and make him see that his way of living will bring him severe consequences or even death itself. The narrator we see at first changes his opinion on what he wants to be by the end of the story, therefore making him a round character. When we first meet the narrator and his two friends, we learn that “[they] wore torn-up leather jackets,

The narrator heads straight for the lake and deep into the woods. As he is waiting for the coast be clear of any greasy characters, he encounters something that feels wet yet soft come in contact with his shoulder. It is there where he has his moment of enlightenment. The man, who we later learn is named Al, is also a bad character as well and that is the reason why he is dead. The narrator mentions how the man must have been “shot during a murky deal, drowned while drunkenly frolicking in the lake” (135). It is there that he learns that could be him if he continues living the bad life. He goes into the water being a rebellious “man” but surfaces as a changed adolescent who wants to change his bad image. Once he’s noticed the seriousness of the situation, he says “I was nineteen, a mere child, an infant” (133). He wants to be considered a bad boy, but he doesn’t know about the consequences that come with that image. That night at the lake was made up of all the bad things that happens to bad characters and the consequences their actions have. Once he experiences all of that, he realizes he’s not prepared to live that sort of lifestyle. He is not truly bad enough like the rest of the adolescents that visit Greasy Lake and live there. What he needs is to grow up from harmful things like alcohol and drugs in order to be good with himself and not with

As soon as they are all together, the narrator goes inn search for the car keys that he dropped on the grass. When he finds them, they are “glinting like jewels in the first tapering shaft of sunlight” because he wants to get out of there as soon as possible (135). He says nothing to his friends because he is ashamed of his behavior and his immaturity. Just when they are about to leave, two woman approach them asking if they had seen their friend Al. Since the boys had to clue about who they were talking about, except the narrator who was too scared to talk, the drunken women offer them some kind of drug. According to them, they look like “some pretty bad characters” (136). The narrator rejects the invitation immediately. All he wants to do now is to “go home to [his] parent’s house and crawl into his bed” (136). He now knows that doing drugs and drinking alcohol would be a very bad thing to do when he is trying to avoid that type of environment. He could have said yes in order to appear tough and bad with the ladies, but he’s done with that chapter of his