“How Does Boyle Depict The Narrator’s Development Throughout “Greasy Lake”?

“Greasy Lake” is written by the Irish postmodernist author T. Coraghesson Boyle. It is a story told by an older narrator reflecting on his youthful ignorance and bravado. The narrator describes himself as a pampered adolescent who considers himself and his friends "bad" characters, "[cultivating] decadence like a taste." When the three friends go searching for the heart of darkness at Greasy Lake they find themselves in more trouble than they had anticipated. Throughout the progression of the story, the narrator’s development is depicted through parallels of the environmental setting, the ever-present metaphor of the Vietnam War, and the author’s ironic, abundant use of metaphors which highlight turning points throughout his emotional journey.

The environmental setting of the story establishes and parallels the narrator’s development. His gradual development from ignorance to knowledge, from chaos to order, from naiveté to understanding parallels his physical passage from water to land and from night to morning. In the beginning of the story, on their way greasy lake, Boyle describes the air as “soft as a hand on your cheek”, a parallel to the protagonists initial “soft”, almost child-like innocence. As the narrator arrives at Greasy Lake and makes the terrible mistake of dropping his keys on the ground, the author describes the keys as being “spilled” into the “dark, rank, mysterious nighttime grass of Greasy Lake”. This is a comparison to the situation; of the protagonist standing before the brink of darkness, at the threshold of revelation and the mysteriousness of the words foreshadow the terrible events that are about to occur. The metaphor of water created through the image of “spilling” car keys and the night “puddling”, communicate the fluidity of the universe of Greasy Lake. This is an amorphous world, a world of the night, a world in which solidity, form, and definition are lost. After the attempted rape, the narrator runs into the woods; his physical situation a parallel to his mental, emotional one; he described himself as being “ankle-deep in muck and tepid water, and still going strong”. This is a metaphor for the abhorrent, unanticipated situation he has suddenly found himself in.

Join now!

One ever-present metaphor is that of comparing the narrator’s situation to that of the Vietnam War. The story begins with a comparison Boyle makes between the narrator losing his car keys and the Vietnam War, describing the loss of the car keys as “a tactical error, as damaging and irreversible in its way as Westmoreland's decision to dig in at Khe Sanh". By comparing these two situations Greasy Lake becomes a nightmarish swamp, the crucible of a gradual forming consciousness, as it was for the United States. Though the narrator, the protagonist of “Greasy Lake” is separated from Vietnam and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay