"Greasy Lake" by T. Coraghessan Boyle

The above picture is a place where the “bad kids” in our school used to go. There was often underage alcohol consumption and drug use. This was basically just an empty spot down by the creek which was a cool place to meet up with friends and hang out. This area reminds me of “Greasy Lake” because it was a cool hang out spot where everyone was away from town. The setting of the story is very important in setting the mood “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” In a place like this, how can anything good happen?



One of the main symbols in “Greasy Lake” is the car that the boys drive, their parent’s “whining station wagons.” Now a station wagon is usually not seen as a “bad boy” car, which leads us to believe the main characters are not as bad as they would like to think. On the other hand the ’57 Chevy and motorcycle gives the impression of a true bad image. These rigs belong to people you would not want to mess with. When the boys came up to these rigs not realizing who they belonged to the reader immediately knew there will be trouble.



I chose this tree to symbolize the change in the characters. During the year a tree undergoes many changes in spring sprouting new green leaves, and in fall changing colors and shedding these leaves to become nothing more than large barren branches. During the story we see the characters change dramatically also. In the beginning the narrator describes himself and his two friends as dangerous and bad. As the story goes on we see they are just kids growing up who get caught in a bad situation. These characters change as people also because they are put through an experience which forces them to mature and grow up.



This final picture shows the pollution this paper plant is putting into the atmosphere. This connects to the story because the theme of pollution. In the story the characters choose to be polluted with drugs and alcohol, they think this makes them “cool.” In all reality this caused them to not think straight which arose to problems out at Greasy Lake. If they weren’t doing these things this situation might not have happened.