Greasy Lake

"Greasy Lake" by Tom Coraghessan Boyle, is the story of a group of 19 year old adolescents, searching for a situation that will proclaim them as "bad boys" and how their minds change and develop. Tom Boyle uses the theme of being bad by showing different characters to symbolize someone always trying to be more than they really are.

In this story, there are many symbolism that the author uses. The term "Greasy" means messy, dirty, and not clean. The term "Lake" means clean, pure, and blue. It is very ironic how these two terms go together.

Ironic is characterized by often poignant differences or incongruities between what is expected and what actually is. There are many ironic events that happen to the narrator in the short story: The ironic circumstances that the narrator in "Greasy Lake" finds himself in are the same circumstances that young people find themselves in when fighting war. One of the ironic events that took place was when the narrator sees himself as a tough guy or "bad character". He believes he is invincible. There is nobody as cool as he is, or as dangerous as him and his friends are. At the end of the story, the narrator realizes all the mistakes he made and became a better man. He wanted to go back to his mother's house and be safe.

Symbolism is the practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships. In the story, there are a lot of symbols. The most common symbol is "Nature".