Setting: Greasy Lake Essay
Setting: Greasy Lake by T. Coraghessan Boyle
In his short story “Greasy Lake,” T. Coraghessan Boyle employs the setting to reflect the state of morality and corruption of a society’s youth, create an appropriate atmosphere, and better develop the characters of the story. Boyle is able to achieve this by centering the story at the Greasy Lake and utilizing the Lake as both a setting and character.
Greasy Lake is described by the narrator in a deliberately appalling to the average reader. However, the narrator and his friends see the lake as the most favorable location to spend their days and late nights. The lake itself is described as “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (130) However, as the narrator explains, the lake was not always like this but instead was named “Wakan” by “the Indians”, the name being “a reference to the clarity of its waters.” (130) The complete change of the lake since the time of the Indians, from clear to murky, exemplifies the corruption of the society’s morals, especially in contrast to the Native Americans who praised and looked after the land. The Wakan, or Greasy Lake, is a symbol for the youth culture itself in the story and is littered, literally and metaphorically, by alcohol, sex and violence.
Through the use of the setting as a symbol of corruption and sin, Boyle creates a wild and uncertain atmosphere. In doing so, he allows the characters to have more freedom and gives the story more believability as the events become more extreme. Along with making the action more believable, the setting helps to make the characters more believable. The narrator often describes himself and his friends as “bad characters” (133) and this becomes more convincing as the narrator describes what he and his friends did at the lake. As the lake is described as having a “bad breath of decay,” (135) it is representative of the narrator and all of the youth at the lake and the decaying of their morals.
This description and personification of the lake also helps to characterize the narrator throughout the story. Originally the narrator is as corrupted as the lake; though born pure and “clear” he becomes tainted by the “beer” and wildness of his culture. As the character ventures to the lake on the night that the majority of the story takes place in, it is not difficult for the reader to correctly predict that some action he takes will lead to some unfortunate event for him and his friends. The narrator comments that losing his keys after unknowingly instigating a fight is “[his] first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate,” (131) foreshadowing the grave and life-threatening events to come. After nearly killing a man and nearly raping a woman, the narrator finds himself in the murky waters of Greasy Lake next to a rotting body of a dead biker. However, after emerging from the water after what appear to be many hours, the narrator realizes how repugnant and unpleasant Greasy Lake is and realizes after seeing the dead body in the lake what happens to the people that frequent the lake. Since Greasy Lake represents the society and culture that the narrator is living in, the fact that he realizes that the lake is this repulsing is a self-realization that his life style is the same.
The narrator is symbolically baptized in the dirty waters of Greasy Lake. He foreshadows when he comments that the mistake of dropping his keys “[opens] the floodgate” of the events of the night to come. The water imagery helps emphasize the baptism and rebirth of the narrator and his friends who become less “bad” after their experience in the lake. The fact that the lake is dirty, murky and corrupt and that the narrator is metaphorically cleaned by it tells the reader that narrator must have been more “bad” than the lake before he was submerged in it- otherwise the water would have made him dirtier and more “bad.” After their baptism, the narrator and his friends turn down an offer to take drugs, offered to them by an attractive female, an offer they would have surely accepted only a few hours before.
By utilizing the setting of the lake as both a tool for a literary baptism and an object to compare and contrast the narrator to, Boyle emphasizes the corruption of the lake, the narrator and the society of the time. However, by ending with the beaten narrator refusing drugs and driving home, Boyle leaves the reader with a sense of hope and good in the world.
In his short story “Greasy Lake,” T. Coraghessan Boyle employs the setting to reflect the state of morality and corruption of a society’s youth, create an appropriate atmosphere, and better develop the characters of the story. Boyle is able to achieve this by centering the story at the Greasy Lake and utilizing the Lake as both a setting and character.
Greasy Lake is described by the narrator in a deliberately appalling to the average reader. However, the narrator and his friends see the lake as the most favorable location to spend their days and late nights. The lake itself is described as “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (130) However, as the narrator explains, the lake was not always like this but instead was named “Wakan” by “the Indians”, the name being “a reference to the clarity of its waters.” (130) The complete change of the lake since the time of the Indians, from clear to murky, exemplifies the corruption of the society’s morals, especially in contrast to the Native Americans who praised and looked after the land. The Wakan, or Greasy Lake, is a symbol for the youth culture itself in the story and is littered, literally and metaphorically, by alcohol, sex and violence.
Through the use of the setting as a symbol of corruption and sin, Boyle creates a wild and uncertain atmosphere. In doing so, he allows the characters to have more freedom and gives the story more believability as the events become more extreme. Along with making the action more believable, the setting helps to make the characters more believable. The narrator often describes himself and his friends as “bad characters” (133) and this becomes more convincing as the narrator describes what he and his friends did at the lake. As the lake is described as having a “bad breath of decay,” (135) it is representative of the narrator and all of the youth at the lake and the decaying of their morals.
This description and personification of the lake also helps to characterize the narrator throughout the story. Originally the narrator is as corrupted as the lake; though born pure and “clear” he becomes tainted by the “beer” and wildness of his culture. As the character ventures to the lake on the night that the majority of the story takes place in, it is not difficult for the reader to correctly predict that some action he takes will lead to some unfortunate event for him and his friends. The narrator comments that losing his keys after unknowingly instigating a fight is “[his] first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate,” (131) foreshadowing the grave and life-threatening events to come. After nearly killing a man and nearly raping a woman, the narrator finds himself in the murky waters of Greasy Lake next to a rotting body of a dead biker. However, after emerging from the water after what appear to be many hours, the narrator realizes how repugnant and unpleasant Greasy Lake is and realizes after seeing the dead body in the lake what happens to the people that frequent the lake. Since Greasy Lake represents the society and culture that the narrator is living in, the fact that he realizes that the lake is this repulsing is a self-realization that his life style is the same.
The narrator is symbolically baptized in the dirty waters of Greasy Lake. He foreshadows when he comments that the mistake of dropping his keys “[opens] the floodgate” of the events of the night to come. The water imagery helps emphasize the baptism and rebirth of the narrator and his friends who become less “bad” after their experience in the lake. The fact that the lake is dirty, murky and corrupt and that the narrator is metaphorically cleaned by it tells the reader that narrator must have been more “bad” than the lake before he was submerged in it- otherwise the water would have made him dirtier and more “bad.” After their baptism, the narrator and his friends turn down an offer to take drugs, offered to them by an attractive female, an offer they would have surely accepted only a few hours before.
By utilizing the setting of the lake as both a tool for a literary baptism and an object to compare and contrast the narrator to, Boyle emphasizes the corruption of the lake, the narrator and the society of the time. However, by ending with the beaten narrator refusing drugs and driving home, Boyle leaves the reader with a sense of hope and good in the world.
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