Summary Of Greasy Lake

Greasy Lake Setting Analysis In the short story “Greasy Lake”, T. Coraghessan Boyle devises a setting that reflects the state of morality and corruption within society’s youth. He creates an appropriate atmosphere in order to develop, and for the reader to better understand, the characters of the story. Boyle achieves this by focusing the story at Greasy Lake, in which he controls the Lake as both a setting and character. The description of Greasy Lake is displayed in an unnerving, distasteful way that gives it a bad reputation “... it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (Top 688) The Narrator and his gang of friends looked forward to traveling

The narrator is originally as corrupted as the lake even though he was born pure and “clear” just as the lake was once pure and clear. He becomes influenced by the “defilement” and wildness of his culture and lifestyle. As the narrator and his gang of bad characters head to the lake, it is easy for the reader to foresee that some action could lead to some unfortunate events for him and his friends by the way they are described. After the narrator nearly killed a man and attempted to rape a woman, the narrator finds himself in the infested, murky waters of Greasy Lake. He finds himself next to a dead, rotting body of a drug dealing biker. Besides everything that has happened so far, after he emerges from the water and after many hours of waiting with this dead body, the narrator has a realization of how vile and unpleasant Greasy Lake is. He soon after realizes what happens to the people that choose to live that outlandish lifestyle. Since Greasy Lake reflects the ways of society and the culture that the narrator is living in, the narrator shifts his entire point of view once realizing the outcome of living this type of lifestyle. This moment of self realization is put into action when the narrator and his friends turn down an offer to take drugs, offered to them by an attractive female, an offer they would have undeniably accepted, without a doubt, only a few hours