Greasy Lake
”Bad Characters or Bad Character Wanna-be’s?”
Greasy Lake is the story of three friends who are bad characters. Until they run into a situation where they question, just how bad they are. Just because they act badly and look bad does not mean they are. They are teenagers in a period, “when courtesy and winning ways [are] out of style when it [is] good to be bad, when they [cultivate] decadence like a taste.” (112) They look bad, wearing torn-up leather jackets, slouching around with toothpicks in their mouths and wearing their shades morning, noon and night. They have the attitude, they drive their parents cars fast, and burn rubber as the pull out of the driveway. They have the bad ...
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mailboxes and hitchhikers, driving up and down Main Street, eating, drinking, and smoking pot. They decide to go up to the local hangout, *u*Greasy Lake*/u*, to see if anything is going on. They cruise up to the lake with their “lemon-flavored gin,” requisite pot and the itch for some action. There is no better place, for these three bad characters to hang out – *u*Greasy Lake*/u*, is an important place for bad characters to learn an important lesson. The lake, like the events about to unfold, is “fetid and murky…mud banks glistened with broken glass [,] strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (112) There are only two vehicles in the whole parking lot, “the exoskeleton of some gaunt chrome insect, a chopper leaned against its kickstand.” (113) And a, “57 Chevy, mint, metallic blue.” (113) No excitement, “expect some junkie halfwit biker and a car freak pumping his girlfriend.” Whatever they are looking for they are not going to find it up at the lake. All of a ...
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of being bad. The reality is this guy has used the tire iron, not for other fights, but to change a flat tire. As for fighting, this bad character has been in only one other fight in his life “in the 6th grade, when a kid with a sleepy eye and two streams of mucous [descending] from his nostrils hit me in the knee with a Louisville slugger.” (114)
The situation is taking on a life of it’s own, a situation the narrator cannot stop.“[The] antagonist [is] shirtless… he [bends] forward to peel Jeff from his back like a wet over coat…Mother*censored*er, he [spits] over and over, and [the narrator] is aware in that instant that all four [of them] – Digby, Jeff and [the narrator] included ...
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Greasy Lake. (2011, March 21). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Greasy-Lake/96431
"Greasy Lake." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Greasy-Lake/96431>
"Greasy Lake." Essayworld.com. March 21, 2011. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Greasy-Lake/96431.
"Greasy Lake." Essayworld.com. March 21, 2011. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Greasy-Lake/96431.
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