If a person doesn’t spiraled down to the depths of evil completely, rising back up would still be achievable. A trio of teenagers in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” is starting off their summer by pulling off seemingly harmless pranks until they come faced with a dispute with the wrong kind of people. Through a series of actions these boys have shown murderous intent, an attempted rape scene, and are able to walk away scot free of any dire consequences. Throughout the story there are numerous symbols that show off to the readers that the boys had the choice to part from a life of evil since they haven’t been fully swallowed up yet. Keys to the car are lost in a moment, much like the innocence of the boys, but are later regained once more.
…show more content…
Al is another greasy bad character in this story that drove a motorcycle and seems to have mastered being evil. Al has walked down the path of evil to the point where he is dead, meanwhile our evil-in-training protagonist has the chance to meet him with the only difference is he is alive. The way this fateful encounter happened was that the narrator and his friends were running and attempting to hide from the other greasy characters that were trying to hurt them by going into the lake and using it as a cover under the woods and night sky. The protagonist realizes the “dead man rotating to expose a mossy beard and eyes as cold as the moon” (Boyle 286). A man that has lived the life of evil is dead floating around the cesspool of a lake. At first, he was shocked to see a bobbing corpse so close next to him and so after he moved to a different location when he suddenly thought about him. “He was probably the only person on the planet worse off than I was”, obviously in comparison the protagonist gets to leave the lake alive while Al is left there to rot for however long it takes for him to be found (287). Dead Al is a super symbol of the future that the boys would probably eventually hit if they were to have continued their path of …show more content…
In the story Greasy Lake written by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author tells the story of three boys and their thirst for being bad. As the boys have learned, they are capable of evil that they couldn’t have even dreamed of. Throughout the story, there are symbols that are in direct correlation with the word “evil” and well as escape and relief from it. First symbol was the keys to the car, which were lost and later found, kind of like a jail cell and being stuck in there (the lake) until unlocked and given freedom once more. Dead Al is another symbol showing that he has gone too far on the road to evil and ended up as a corpse bobbing in the waters days on end (future that holds for the boys if continued on that path). Lastly, the station wagon, despite being thrashed in every corner of it, the wheels are still intact giving them the chance to be saved from that horrid
Al is another greasy bad character in this story that drove a motorcycle and seems to have mastered being evil. Al has walked down the path of evil to the point where he is dead, meanwhile our evil-in-training protagonist has the chance to meet him with the only difference is he is alive. The way this fateful encounter happened was that the narrator and his friends were running and attempting to hide from the other greasy characters that were trying to hurt them by going into the lake and using it as a cover under the woods and night sky. The protagonist realizes the “dead man rotating to expose a mossy beard and eyes as cold as the moon” (Boyle 286). A man that has lived the life of evil is dead floating around the cesspool of a lake. At first, he was shocked to see a bobbing corpse so close next to him and so after he moved to a different location when he suddenly thought about him. “He was probably the only person on the planet worse off than I was”, obviously in comparison the protagonist gets to leave the lake alive while Al is left there to rot for however long it takes for him to be found (287). Dead Al is a super symbol of the future that the boys would probably eventually hit if they were to have continued their path of …show more content…
In the story Greasy Lake written by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author tells the story of three boys and their thirst for being bad. As the boys have learned, they are capable of evil that they couldn’t have even dreamed of. Throughout the story, there are symbols that are in direct correlation with the word “evil” and well as escape and relief from it. First symbol was the keys to the car, which were lost and later found, kind of like a jail cell and being stuck in there (the lake) until unlocked and given freedom once more. Dead Al is another symbol showing that he has gone too far on the road to evil and ended up as a corpse bobbing in the waters days on end (future that holds for the boys if continued on that path). Lastly, the station wagon, despite being thrashed in every corner of it, the wheels are still intact giving them the chance to be saved from that horrid