Boyles Greasy Lake and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism - Essay Example

In his article, en d “Boyle’s ‘Greasy Lake’ and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism” Michael Walker gives arguments to prove his ment that postmodern literature offers no traces of character revelation, no signs of a sudden insight of character under pressure. His belief is that postmodernism is a cleverly written “endless circuit of plot and character, the zanier, the more discordant, the more violent the better.” In this sense, Walker offers “Greasy Lake” as a story that possesses the grounds to portray the perfect revelatory, coming of age tale, where the protagonist undergoes changes in character and begins perceiving the world with mature eyes.

But, this does not happen, and anything that might resemble revelation is a mere parody, because what was supposed to be the moral essence of this juvenile escapade, turns into a mute shrugging of the shoulders in the manner of “nothing to say.” Being asked the question whether to agree or disagree with Walker, one would have to comply. Because, for postmodernists, morality is a personal matter, they subject morality to personal opinion. They define it as each person’s private code of ethics without the need to follow traditional values and rules.

But one should not believe that postmodernism proposes moral chaos. It merely redirects ethical concerns through a painless commitment to values that do not interfere with personal freedom. The adolescent boys in “Greasy Lake” might not have learned anything from their experience, but they were not pressed with limitations on their freedom, a notion postmodernism speaks fervently against. It was up to them to decide on the morality of their actions: was it fair to hit Bobby on the head with a tire iron, to attempt rape, to not tell the truth about the biker’s dead body floating in the waters of the swamp like Greasy Lake.

Not even this image of the biker’s watery grave instills in the protagonist a sense of revelation of the passing of life, of human frailty, of morality of human actions, of decency to tell the truth. Nothing. He dwells on the practical concern of having lost his keys. In the end, their moment of enlightened transformation has passed, but the protagonist’s pacifying silence in the end proves that for him “there is nothing to be learned at Greasy Lake; there is nothing to say.” The narrator was submerged into the dirty waters of Greasy Lake and was supposed to emerge with a cleansed sense of maturity and understanding.

Yet, their escapade was stripped off of an ethical dimension. They are who they are: juvenile boys, seizing their right to autonomy, to happiness and to individual fulfillment in a post-morality age.