Decoding 'Bad': A Thematic Analysis of 'Greasy Lake'

What does it mean to be “bad”? In his short story “Greasy Lake”, T. Coraghessan Boyle writes: “There was a time when chivalry and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad”. Being “bad” can mean dressing uniquely and acting differently, but there is a line between being a “bad” character and being truly “bad”. When that line is crossed unfortunate things happen to the character. Boyle uses the setting of Greasy Lake to show how a teenage wasteland can lead to moral decay. To begin, Greasy lake is a place for teens to act or flirt with the idea of “bad”.The narrator writes: “It was 2:00 A.M; the bars were closing. There was nothing to do but take a bottle of lemon-flavored gin up to Greasy Lake”. Usually teens that are “bad” are up in the wee hours of morning, drinking and messing around. As the story progresses, the narrator

Before the narrator and his friends could sexually assault the girl, the “bad character’s” reinforcements arrive. “Before we could pin her to the hood of the car.. a pair of headlights swung into the parking lot. We bolted”. Running away from the car, the narrator hides in the lake knowing that people would not look for him there. While in the filth of the lake, the narrator's moral breaks down and is filled with remorse: “I was breathing in small gasps and sobs. Digby and Jeff had vanished. I waded deeper, stealthy, hunted, the ooze sucking at my sneakers”. But that was not the end of the narrator’s emotional breakdown or karma. While in the lake he encounters a dead body. “(I was nineteen, a mere child, an infant, and here in the space of five minutes I had struck down one greasy character and into the waterlogged carcass of another)”. At this point the narrator is so devastated because he is experiencing so many emotions: sadness, guilt, anguish, dread, and disorientation. He is covered in filth, scared out of his mind, and completely