Greasy Lake by T.C.Boyle - Research Paper Example

The three boys think themselves as epitome of cool characters as they roll their marijuana cigarettes and wear sunglasses day and night. They think themselves as bad characters. “We were nineteen. We were bad”. (Boyle, 1). Yet, the characters are from good families and were not born on streets and they were not local hoodlums. They are three young boys who love to rebel. They belong to that genre of frustrated young men who attempt to find a suitable outlet to exercise their passion and energies in the so called refined American suburban society.

They take effort to design their life in an elaborate manner to prove how bad and dangerous they are. In this story, one unfortunate incident at Greasy Lake transforms the characters from being innocent to mature individuals. (Warlock, 294) The story starts when the boys were having their summer vacations. On the third night the three of them set out in a car to seek some excitement in their otherwise dull and boring life. “The first two nights we’d been out till dawn, looking for something we never found” (Boyle, 2).

It is a warm Saturday night in the month of June and they drive being bored and drunk and in their usual attire. “We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine” (Boyle, 1). They are seeking for some action to spice up their life. They drive up to Greasy Lake which was once known by the Indians as Wakan because of its clear water. It is now “glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfire…..this was nature”.

This is the place where all the “bad” boys gathered “to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets” (Boyle, 2). On this particular night, the boys soon become entangled in violence and the “rich scent of possibility” turns sour. They mistakenly believe a car as their friend’s car and purposely do a lot of damage to it as part of their prank.

“This was hilarious. Ajoke. Tony would experience premature withdrawal and expect to be confronted by grim-looking state troopers with flashlights” (Boyle, 3). They soon find out that the car belongs to a bad person in greasy jeans and boots. As they are getting beaten up, the narrator tries to find the car keys that he lost while climbing out of the car. He hits the antagonist with a tire iron and soon ends up in the primal ooze of Greasy Lake to swim to the other side where he can hide himself in the woods.

The emergence of the tire iron is the turning point here as they think that they have killed the guy. They are shocked by the thought they have committed murder and are then accosted by the girl who is in the car. The boys attempt to rape her, but are soon interrupted when another car enters the parking lot. The boys are now convinced that they have murdered someone and also been witnessed as attempted rapists. The arrival of the car makes them jump into the Greasy Lake to swim to safety. Later on, it was found out that the man they hit has