T. Caraghessan Boyle’s story, “Greasy Lake”, is a rite of passage story. This can be seen in the themes throughout the story. The story itself has coinciding themes in it. Right from the beginning the boys are looking for trouble. They wish to be bad or to be known as bad characters. The narrator describes them as boys who “wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with tooth picks in their mouths, sniffed glue and ether...drank gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, and Bali Hai” (125). Was wishing to be bad a good thing? Through all of the trouble and bad situations that the boys encountered, lessons were learned. The themes of being careful for what you wish for and through trouble comes learning complement each other throughout the story. The first theme becomes evident when the boys are pounding on the dashboard, sticking their heads out the windows, driving up and down the strip at two in the morning, and drinking. They are out looking for trouble because they are bored. They get the trouble they are looking for when they think a car is someone they know when in reality it was an actual bad character. This is the beginning event that shows that being bad is not always a good thing. The narrator drops his keys beginning the fight with the bad character. He almost kills the man when he takes him out with a tire iron. The boys are presented with the opportunity to be tough, to take out the man and be bad. But once “He collapsed. Wet his pants. Went loose in his boots” they didn’t know what to do (128). In these situations, the boys are not acting out of toughness, they are acting spontaneous and without thinking. They try to rape a woman that was in the car with the bad character but, when a car pulls up in the parking lot they run like scared teenagers into the woods. The narrator then finds himself in the presence of a dead body while his mother’s car is being destroyed. After everything has calmed down, the narrator and his friends go out to the car and get in. When a women comes up to their window and says, “ Hey, you guys look like some pretty bad characters—been
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The narrator grows from a young teenager to adulthood through all of his experiences. His growth starts from the first mistake of dropping the keys in the grass to the girls in the parking lot looking for their friend. The boys see things throughout the story that 19 year old boys should not see. The boys learned valuable lessons from each experience they went through. They were not as tough as they thought when it came to fighting. The narrator realizes he could be dead instead when he thinks “My car was wrecked; he was dead” (130). He thought of excuses to tell his parents of ways to get out of the trouble he was about to find himself in. After he thought of the dead man, he realized it could be worse and knew he was just going to have to take the consequences for his actions. This really shows his transformation from adolescence to adulthood. He thought of everything that happened and what could have happened and realized how lucky he really
The narrator grows from a young teenager to adulthood through all of his experiences. His growth starts from the first mistake of dropping the keys in the grass to the girls in the parking lot looking for their friend. The boys see things throughout the story that 19 year old boys should not see. The boys learned valuable lessons from each experience they went through. They were not as tough as they thought when it came to fighting. The narrator realizes he could be dead instead when he thinks “My car was wrecked; he was dead” (130). He thought of excuses to tell his parents of ways to get out of the trouble he was about to find himself in. After he thought of the dead man, he realized it could be worse and knew he was just going to have to take the consequences for his actions. This really shows his transformation from adolescence to adulthood. He thought of everything that happened and what could have happened and realized how lucky he really