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Nicholas Chew
Ms. Eva Fuchs
English R1B, Section 07
29 September 2015
“Greasy Lake:” Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
According to an article published by Psychology Matters Asia, three steps are required
for personal transformation: awareness, acceptance, and action. Individuals must be aware of the
issue they wish to fix, accept that they are affected by this issue, and act to fix it. This structure is
demonstrated in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake,” as the main character transforms from a
criminal to a more conscientious person. Narrated retrospectively by the matured main character,
the story tells of three teenagers who head up to Greasy Lake to “watch a girl take off her clothes
and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars” (Boyle 165).
However, “[w]hatever it was [they] were looking for, [they] weren’t about to find it at Greasy
Lake. Not that night” (165). Instead, the narrator begins to grow from a blatant criminal to a
conscientious man, following the structure of becoming aware of his wrongdoings, accepting that
he committed them, then acting against repeating them.
The unnamed narrator begins his journey towards innocence by becoming aware of his
juvenile criminality. He introduces his story: “There was a time when courtesy and winning ways
went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We
were all dangerous characters then…We were bad.“ (164). As the narrator retrospectively
evaluates his life, his use of the past tense serves to represent his changed perspective towards
being “bad” (164). The narrator becomes aware that there “was” a time “when it was good to be
bad” suggesting that in the present, being bad is no longer commendable (164). In addition, the
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stark contrast between his perspective on women in the beginning and end of the story
demonstrates his ethical growth. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is focused solely on
“watch[ing] a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk” (165). His attempted
rape of a girl, an act he labels an “Ur-crime” or a disgusting, primitive evil, furthers this sexual
view of women (167). He also dehumanizes the girl by deeming her not a woman but a “fox”
(165). He describes her as “short, barefoot, dressed in panties and a man’s shirt” (167). On the
other hand, after his metaphorical baptism in the lake, he sees the two “girls [emerge] from the
Mustang…The second girl was picking her way across the lot, unsteady on her heels, looking up
at us and then away…there was something wrong with her: she was stoned or drunk, lurching
now and waving her arms for balance” (170). With the first girl, he notices only her superficial
qualities and dehumanizes her by calling her a “fox.” Near the end of the story, however, he
