The setting in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” shows powerful symbols that can help the reader understand certain aspects of story. Greasy lake is a story, where the narrator, who represents Boyle due to his rebellious childhood, goes out with his also “independent friends” to a hang out spot to party and maybe meet women. Little did they know that the lake itself is “fetid and murky” and the surrounding are “mud banks with glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires” (129). The characters get in a fight with people thinking that they were someone else and then at the end story realize they don’t want to be independent people anymore and turn down a party from a woman. Since nature can be
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The narrator explained that before the lake was called “Wakan” by the Indians, for being “a reference to the clarity of the waters, so instead being “fetid and murky” it was clear (129). The transformation from the “Wakan” to now is s symbol of how things changed for young people and how the youth’s morals changed from good to bad (129).The narrator even says that “there was a time where courtesy and winning went out of style” also describing that it was the norm to be bad at the time (129). It symbolizes how the youth was poisoned by alcohol, sex and violence which led to the pollution of the …show more content…
The narrator finds himself next to a dead biker, after a few hours he leaves the lake and now realizes that how disgusting and bad the greasy lake was. The dead biker was a symbol of how things will end up for him if he keeps driving down this rebellious path. Since the lake represents the culture, the narrator realized that was terrible and did not want to be a part of that anymore. We know this cause at the end of the story; the three characters get back to the car and got invited by two drunken girls. When they invited to do drugs and party, the narrator said “I thought I was going to cry” he did not want to do that anymore (136). He wanted to go home and sleep the bad memories away. Declining that invitation, the narrator and his friends have an epiphany and all them learn that being bad is worth getting woman and getting
The narrator explained that before the lake was called “Wakan” by the Indians, for being “a reference to the clarity of the waters, so instead being “fetid and murky” it was clear (129). The transformation from the “Wakan” to now is s symbol of how things changed for young people and how the youth’s morals changed from good to bad (129).The narrator even says that “there was a time where courtesy and winning went out of style” also describing that it was the norm to be bad at the time (129). It symbolizes how the youth was poisoned by alcohol, sex and violence which led to the pollution of the …show more content…
The narrator finds himself next to a dead biker, after a few hours he leaves the lake and now realizes that how disgusting and bad the greasy lake was. The dead biker was a symbol of how things will end up for him if he keeps driving down this rebellious path. Since the lake represents the culture, the narrator realized that was terrible and did not want to be a part of that anymore. We know this cause at the end of the story; the three characters get back to the car and got invited by two drunken girls. When they invited to do drugs and party, the narrator said “I thought I was going to cry” he did not want to do that anymore (136). He wanted to go home and sleep the bad memories away. Declining that invitation, the narrator and his friends have an epiphany and all them learn that being bad is worth getting woman and getting