Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage

"Greasy Lake" by T.C. Boyle is a tale of one young man's quest for the "rich scent of possibility on the breeze." It was a time in a man's life when there was an almost palpable sense of destiny, as if something was about to happen, like a rite of passage that will thrust him into adulthood or cement his "badness" forever. The story opens with our narrator on a night of debauchery with his friends drinking, eating, and cruising the streets as he had done so many times in the past. What he found on that night of violence and mayhem would force him to look at himself hard. This is a story of one man's journey from boyhood to maturity.

The story is short and relies on a simple plot, involving violence and a series of climaxes to sustain the intensity of emotion right up to the end. The events that take place herd the narrator to an epiphany that he doesn't necessarily want, but knows is inevitable anyway. First the barhopping and partying symbolize the fruitless search, for that special something, but instead leads him to his last resort, Greasy Lake. Next, a simple case of mistaken identity will spiral out of control into an act of desperation with a tire iron followed by an attempted rape. As he runs for his life into the lake the tension mounts to a fevered pitch when he comes face to face with a dead body in the lake. .".. Stumbled back in horror and revulsion, my mind yanked in six different directions (I was nineteen, a mere child, an infant, and here in the space of minutes I'd struck down one greasy character and blundered into the water- logged carcass of a second."(149) Here, the narrator has his epiphany, that he isn't a "bad character" after all. As he ponders these things the thugs take their frust...

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...sh world of the delivery room. He leaves you with the impression that's he's not happy with this process of growing-up and resents it as shown by the tail-between-his-legs posture as he and his mother's car limp together out of the parking lot.

The final events that occur are just a slap in the face when the party girls show up and offer them the good time they thought they were searching for the night before. Such irony. When all is said and done, growing up and realizing you are not the invincible tough guy you think you are and maybe being "bad" isn't what it's cracked up to be. Now is the time to head home, face the music, and try to live down the events at Greasy Lake.

T.C. Boyle. "Greasy Lake" Classic and Contemporary.

th ed. Ed. Charles Bohmer and Lynn Grant.UpperSaddleRiver, NJ: PrenticeHall,

1010-1016