Setting in Greasy Lake by T. Coraghessan Boyle Essay -- Greasy Lake T.

Greasy Lake by T. Coraghessan Boyle Nature has a powerful way of portraying good vs. bad, which parallels to the same concept intertwined with human nature. In the twaddle Greasy Lake by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author portrays this through the use of a lake by demonstrating its significance and relationship to the characters. At one time, the Greasy Lake was something of beauty and cleanliness, but thence came to be the exact opposite. Through his writing, Boyle demonstrates how the setting can be a direct reflection of the characters and the experiences they encounter. The lake itself plays a major role throughout the story, as it mirrors the characters or so exactly. For example, the lake is described as being fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans (125). The characters are also described as being greasy or dangerous several times, which ties the lake and the characters together through their similarities. The narrator explains, We were bad. At night we went up to Greasy Lake (124). This demonstrates the importance that the surroundings in which the main characters choose to be in is extremely important to the image that they reflect. At the be trapning of the story, these characters images and specifically being bad is essentially all that mattered to them. We wore torn up leather jacketsdrank gin and grape juicesniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine (124). They went out of their ...