Greasy Lake
Like the lake, the main characters are so adumbrated that you cannot see their true selves. In the story "Greasy Lake," T.C. Boyle uses diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax to express the narrator's facetious tone. The characters change their behaviors and appearances to convey a "primal badness" because they are embarrassed to be in the upper class. First of all, the higher level vocabulary the narrator uses for these kids is much higher than one would initially imagine. This expresses the diction applied in this piece of literature. Boyle uses words like "decadence" and "susurrus" to help describe the nature and setting of Greasy Lake. He mostly uses words that one would not usually use on a normal day-to-day basis; words like "snuff," "fetid," and "feculent." This brilliant vocabulary clashes with the words and phrases the narrator uses to try to sound "tough." For instance, "pumping his girlfriend" and "my bowels turned to ice." He is very intellectual, but he doesn't want to admit it because he's trying so hard to be rebellious. Secondly, Boyle illustrates imagery in this selection. As I read through this passage, I noticed the narrator mention frogs on page 261 and twice on page 265. At the first glance, I
It is ironic that the narrator describes his friends as "two dangerous characters" even though Digby currently attends Cornell and is "allowing" his father to pay the tuition, and Jeff is considering dropping out of school to become a painter or a musician. I thought escape," "My jaws ached, my knee throbbed, my coccyx was on fire," "We were nineteen. Boyle uses parallel sentences to get to the point and to show how bad they really think they are. " The second girl came up to them as they sat in their car (they didn't even bother removing the used condoms). Some might say the language displayed in this piece is informal, and some could quite possibly declare it is slang. Just when the characters thought their night was finally over, two young women "emerge from the Mustang. " One thing that really caught my eye when I read this was on page 266 when the two blond fraternity boys show up in a Trans-Am. " The drawn out detail used in nearly every sentence of this stunning writing style the narrator so carefully wrote is yet another way it casts the shadow on his facetious tone. I cradled my head," "I thought nothing. We were bad," and "Her pupils were pinpoints, her eyes glass. " The girls didn't really seem to care who they were going to go out with that night, just as long as they could get with somebody. However, they can't escape the fact that they are intelligent, and they will gain nothing from being so rebellious. "One of them was gathering up bottles, rocks, muck, candy wrappers, used condoms, poptops, and other refuse and pitching it through the window on the driver's side. " Boyle makes it clear to us on the very first page that the waters are murky and not clear.
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