Setting

Tristan Sofia
Ms. Clapp
AP Literature and Composition
29 September, 2008
Setting the Character
The lake in the setting of T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story, Greasy Lake, provides a source of enlightenment for the main character. The changes of Greasy Lake reflect on the main character’s changes and growth in personality. The setting also is an example of different elements of How to Read Literature like a Professor. Quest and baptism is represented by the lake, allowing the main character to come to his self-realization and enlightenment. Setting allows a progression in as a person in the main character.
The main character goes on a quest to find the keys he drops around Greasy Lake, to escape the men chasing him and his friends, but not only does he find his keys but he finds self-knowledge. The trigger to the chase is the main character and his friend’s foolish actions, such as, “Digby leaning on the horn” and the main character “flicking on his brights” (131), to bother the man in the next car. While trying to escape from the men, the main character hides in the waters of Greasy Lake, where he finds a “dead man rotating to expose a mossy beard and eyes cold as the moon” (134). The main character goes through a baptism, and when he rises from the water, the ordeal leads to the main character’s realization of his foolishness and the possible serious consequences if he continues to act carelessly. Boyle writes, “Who was he, I wondered, this victim of time and circumstance bobbing sorrowfully in the lake at my back. The owner of the chopper, no doubt, a bad older character come to this. Shot during a murky drug deal, drowned while drunkenly frolicking in the lake.” (136). The main character understands that if he continues to act recklessly, he can end up like the dead man in the lake. After he finds his keys, the main character encounters two girls that offer him drugs and a chance “to party” (137). As a demonstration of their newfound maturity, the main character and his friends turned down their offer. The setting allows the characters to experience a rebirth in their behavior.
Boyle describes Greasy Lake as filthy, reflecting the main character’s brash actions, but by the end of the short story, Greasy Lake changes to look more natural to represent the cleansing the main character undergoes. At the beginning of the short story, the main character describes the lake as an area to, “drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars. . .” (130) The main character ends the quote with, “This is nature”, meaning that the main character sees “nature” as being able to be wild and acting hastily. The descriptions of the lake transforms by the end of the short story, as the main character takes note more about the environment, such as, “the dew that slick on the leaves” and the “smell in the air, raw and sweet at the same time.” (136). Here, again, the main character repeats “This is nature” (136). The contrast of the ideas of “nature” shows the character’s intensified thoughts of appreciating his surroundings, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to have fun. The change in the main character’s opinion of “nature” is another example of his development as a person.
The setting of Greasy Lake allows the progression of the characters’ personalities, in addition to provide movement in the short story. As the characters mature and become cleansed, the lake appears to make the same changes. What was once the cause of the boys’ recklessness is now cause of the characters to grow mentally by the end of the short story.