Greasy Lake

“On the far side of the lot, like the exoskeleton of some gaunt chrome insect, a chopper leaned against its kickstand.”

This simile describing a motorcycle in the lake’s parking lot symbolizes rebirth or personal change. Insects commonly shed their own skin, or exoskeleton. By referencing this process, the narrator foreshadows that he and/or the other characters will shed former iterations of self.

“He merely backed off a step, his face like a Toltec mask, and laid Digby out with a single whistling roundhouse blow […] a tinny compound of shock, rage, and impotence wadded in my throat.”

The narrator describes the boys’ fight with the unknown men in vivid detail, exaggerating hits as “whistling,” as if they are acting out their anger in a cartoon. In this way, the narrator creates ironic distance between himself and the fight and keeps the severity of the situation at bay.

“‘Motherfucker,’ he spat, over and over, and I was aware in that instant that all four of us—Digby, Jeff, and myself included—were chanting ‘motherfucker, motherfucker’ as if it were a battle cry.”

As the fight escalates, the language the narrator uses to describe the characters’ behavior becomes more primal and animalistic. Pretense must be left behind for the characters to fully inhabit violence. The characters’ chanting reflects their shift from merely fighting as individuals to taking part in a “battle”—something larger than themselves.

“(What happened next? the detective asks the murderer from beneath the turned-down brim of his porkpie hat. I don’t know, the murderer says, something came over me. Exactly.)”

This parenthetical from the narrator stands out as one of only a handful in the story. The narrator is on the one hand inserting an unexpected joke about classic murder mystery tropes to offset the seriousness of his actions. However, he also uses the pretend murderer’s explanation—“I don’t know […] something came over me”—to convey that hitting the “greasy character” with the tire iron is not an action he can easily explain. His behavior no longer felt conscious.

“The effect was instantaneous, astonishing. He was a stunt man and this was Hollywood, he was a big grimacing toothy balloon and I was a man with a straight pin. He collapsed.”

The narrator uses a humorous metaphor to describe the way the greasy man falls after the narrator hits him with the tire iron. The metaphor distances the narrator from what happened and suggests that the narrator is used to thinking of violence as make-believe. Watching the man fall is “astonishing,” and the only way to avoid panic in the moment is to create emotional distance from the situation by making a joke of it.

“‘Animals!’ she screamed, running at us with her fists clenched and wisps of blow-dried hair in her face. There was a silver chain round her ankle, and her toenails flashed in the glare of the headlights. I think it was the toenails that did it.”

When the young woman (referred to as “the fox”) exits the greasy character’s car and reveals herself as a witness to their violence, the narrator registers her only through superficial details. Rather than noting her fear or anger—details that would instantly humanize her—he focuses on her hair, jewelry, and nail polish. He is trying to view her as an object to make it easier to rape her.

“We were on her like Bergman’s deranged brothers—see no evil, hear none, speak none—panting, wheezing, tearing at her clothes, grabbing for flesh. We were bad characters, and we were scared and hot and three steps over the line—anything could have happened.”

The narrator makes his second reference to the 1960 film The Virgin Spring, directed by Ingmar Bergman, here alluding to the “deranged brothers” who rape a young woman in the film. The narrator juxtaposes that reference with the Japanese proverb, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” which reminds people to avoid interacting with any kind of evil. This further illuminates the narrator’s actions and those of his friends. The boys are clearly engaging in an evil act by attempting to rape this young woman, but they seem unaware of their actions.

“Behind me, the girl’s screams rose in intensity, disconsolate, incriminating, the screams of the Sabine women, the Christian martyrs, Anne Frank dragged from the garret.”

The narrator compares the young woman’s screams to ancient and historical women, illustrating the cyclical nature of violence. The ancient Romans raped the Sabine women and forced them into marriage. The reference to Anne Frank recalls war—a recurring motif. In this way, the narrator attempts to justify his actions as normal (recalling his earlier statement “this is nature”) while simultaneously admitting their abhorrence.

“I stumbled back, but the muck took hold of my feet—a sneaker snagged, balance lost—and suddenly I was pitching face forward into the buoyant black mass, throwing out my hands in desperation while simultaneously conjuring the image of reeking frogs and muskrats revolving in slicks of their own deliquescing juices.”

Many descriptions of the lake rely on personification to underscore its transformative effect on the narrator. Rather than merely getting grease and muck on his clothes, the lake “takes hold” of the narrator and traps him. In this moment, the narrator also thinks of the animals and other creatures that might be in the water but describes them in grotesque imagery reminiscent of death and decay. In figuring death as a transformation, the passage develops the theme of the Loss of Innocence; the narrator is now initiated into this world of frank violence and death.

“I inched forward, elbows and knees, my belly pressed to the muck, thinking of guerrillas and commandos and The Naked and the Dead.”

The reference to Norman Mailer’s World War II novel The Naked and the Dead rings satirical as the narrator attempts to glorify his own complicity in the night’s violence. In an actual war, violence is normalized and even encouraged as (at least theoretically) serving a purpose. This contrasts with the pointless violence at Greasy Lake that the boys enact both consciously and unconsciously.

“Then I thought of the dead man. He was probably the only person on the planet worse off than I was. I thought about him, fog on the lake, insects chirring eerily, and felt the tug of fear, felt the darkness opening up inside me like a set of jaws.”

In saying that few are worse off than he is, the narrator reveals his inability to think beyond himself and frames himself as a victim of circumstances beyond his control. His sensory experience of the natural space around him creates a foreboding sense of all-consuming fear. Having been through the “baptismal” experience of violence and meeting death in the lake, the narrator is recognizing the legitimate, irreversible consequences of his actions—a darkness he can’t simply cast off later.

“I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization. Everything was still. This was nature.”

The image of the wrecked car, compared to a vanished civilization, and the repetition of the statement “this is nature” recall the opening pages of the story and create the sense that an extended period of time has passed: The narrator has gone through a change, and that change is so immense it is reflected in the metaphorical passage of time. The repetition of “this is nature” also plays on the shifting meanings of the “natural” throughout the story. Nature is not only the frogs and the crickets but human behavior, including violence and fear.

“We looked at her like zombies, like war veterans, like deaf-and-dumb pencil peddlers.”

Strong similes describe the characters’ state of shock and disorientation after experiencing a truly violent altercation. The comparison to war veterans and pencil peddlers emphasizes the vacancy that the narrator, Jeff, and Digby feel after shedding their former “bad” selves.