The Role Of The Narrator In Greasy Lake

The narrator in “Greasy Lake” is a very interesting character and really changes throughout the story. The narrator thought that he was “bad” until an interesting night that had which changed all that. “We were dangerous characters then. We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine.” The narrator did things that were wrong and he didn’t care what his parents thought. He even took his “parents’ whining station wagons out onto the street and left a patch of rubber half a block long.”

The narrator would drink “gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, and Bali Hai.” He was nineteen years old when he did these things and he was “bad.” The narrator “didn’t

give a shit about anything.” At night the narrator and his friends would go up to Greasy Lake, but this night was one that they will never forget.
The narrator was doing things that were very wrong and gross.

Instead of doing things with his friends at home like playing sports or games, they would just go up to Greasy Lake and do really bad things. “We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets.” Some of the things that he would do when he went up to the lake were totally wrong especially for someone of that age. He was only nineteen years old and drinking beer. Back then it was common for teenagers of that age to be drinking but it is still wrong. It was also wrong for him to be smoking pot and watching girls take off their

clothes.
The narrator eventually finds out that being “bad” may not be the right thing to do. When he and his friends Digby and Jeff arrive at Greasy Lake that night “the taillights of a single car winked” at them and “on the far end die of the lot…a chopper leaned against its kickstand.” These two vehicles and they were the only ones around.
The narrator then decides that he wants to have a little fun so he “flicked on the brights” at the car parked there.

He and his friends then “hit the horn, strobed the lights, and then jumped out of the car to press their witty faces” to the windows of the car. But the narrator then makes a mistake and loses his grip on the keys and he spills them in the grass-“in the dark, rank, mysterious nighttime grass of Greasy Lake.”

The narrator then makes another mistake which is that the car that they just went up to and bothered was not their friend that they thought and it was some stranger. The stranger of the car then gets out and he kicked the narrator right under the chin, chipped his favorite tooth, and left him sprawled in the dirt. The narrator then realized that he “was in a lot of trouble, and the lost ignition key was his grail and salvation.”

The narrator later on in the fight grabs the tire iron that he had kept under the driver’s seat and he “brought the tire iron down across his ear.” After the character gets knocked out and is on the ground the narrator realizes that “we were bad characters, and we were scared and hot and three steps over the line.” This incident was just one of the ones that the narrator and his friends got into that night. The narrator later on realizes that the way that he acts and the things that he did were wrong and that they need to

stop.
The narrator shows signs of change throughout the story from being a “bad” boy to being a normal nineteen year old. The first sign of change is when the narrator found the body in Greasy Lake. This occurred after the narrator and his friends flashed the lights of the car at the stranger’s car, tried to fight the stranger who the narrator knocks out with the tire iron, and after the three of them try to rape the stranger’s girl. After the narrator found the dead body, which is believed to be Al, the narrator starts to stop trying to do things to show people and his friends that he is "bad." The narrator eventually just wants to get back in the car and leave. He realized that what had happened was really bad and he doesn’t want to do anything that will cause issues like what just had happened.