Greasy Lake

There comes a time in every young man's life for him to break a barrier of reality to go from invincibility to mortality. They have to take that leap forward gradually, but as they do they will make mistakes along the way and have to learn from the bad ones. The short story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle is about three young men who have to break that barrier of reality in one horrible night by making mistake after mistake, only they have to learn from their mistakes quickly or they wont get out of their bad situation. There are two different symbols, themes, and characters that have meaning to it in this story. The symbols are the key being lost, and the water itself signifies a rebirth. The themes that are seen in this story are that the point of view was told from an older person looking back at his younger years and that he would have to learn from the mistakes of the past. The characters that have meanings to them are the main character and Bobby (the bad guy). Three wanna be bad characters made their main mistake of the night by driving out to Greasy Lake, a place everyone went to hang out. When they arrived they saw what appeared to be their friend's car parked so they began flashing their headlights and honking the horn. When the main character gets out of the car he drops the key to the car and there is a dramatic feeling that comes over him, Boyle really explains it well when the character explains how he feels at that moment. The first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate, was losing my grip on the keys. In the excitement, leaping from the car with the gin in one hand and a roach clip in the other, I spilled them in the grass----in the dark, rank, mysterious nighttime grass of Greasy Lake. This was tactical error, as damaging and irreversible in it's way as Westmoreland's decision to dig in at Khe Sanh. I felt it like a jab of intuition, and I stopped there by