Greasy Lake Response

"Greasy Lake" by T.C. Boyle starts off with an amusing opening, but the story itself is in no way amusing or hilarious at all. It is a coming-of-age story, the moment where Boyle departs from his naivety and adolescence and begins to realizes the consequences of real life.

The scene that stood out was a short one. It was where Boyle, Digby, and Jeff attempt to rape the girl they found in Bobby's car, the 'fox'. The fact that they call her a 'fox' dehumanizes her, makes her an object to be captured, to be preyed upon. As a female, this frightens me. It frightens me that they hardly acknowledge her as something more than flesh. But I believe that the boys’ reaction to force themselves on her is caused, driven by their incessant need to be ‘bad’. Before assaulting the girl, Boyle brings down a tire iron on Bobby, knocking him out. The boys believe they have murdered him. Previously they had only been drinking cheap alcohol, running around the suburbs, trying so hard to look like they didn’t care at all. They were rebelling against their parents, the safe society they had grown up in. They weren’t truly bad. But this incident, nearly killing a real man, is a wakeup call. They aren’t bad, they had not meant it. But by trying, by looking for something to do, by trying to prove their ‘bad’-ness, they had found it and are not prepared to deal with the results.

And upon finding the girl, they have already stepped out of line, already gone beyond what they thought they would never near. Driven by their primal instinct, they approach her, treating her like a piece of meat. Like a fox.

I believe it is the irony of the opening that strikes me hard. The opening is so funny, so reflective, so deceiving that when they force themselves on her I felt shocked, knew in my gut that this was unlike them. And I think that that might have been a technique of the author. The reader and Boyle both start off with a good life, humor and youth on his side. But by the time they have struck down a man with a tire iron and attempt to rape a girl, that youth, that humor is gone. It is real life at its worse, human instinct at its worse.

I believe that they would have raped her if they were not stopped. Out of fear they ran because they know they had been trying to do a serious crime. Their consciences died with the humor and youth they previously retained. In that moment they were truly bad.