Greasy Lake  THE NARRATOR
• Who is the Narrator??
• Ultimate rebel upon first glance. The unnamed main character goes out of his way to
appear "bad" to his friends and anyone around him.
• I found him to be really pretentious and aggravating.
• The first sign of the narrator's change appears when he discovers the body in the
lake.
• Before this happened he and his friends were flashing the lights of their car at another car,
then they get in a fight with a "...very bad greasy character" and then they try to rape a girl.
• When the narrator swam through the Greasy Lake to get away he found a dead
body, Al, and from then on the narrator begins to stray from putting on a show
of being "bad.“
• All he wants to do is get back to the car and leave Greasy Lake; he doesn't try to start
everything up again or do something worse than before.
Greasy Lake  THE NARRATOR
• When the narrator and his friends regroup they don't express any
signs of being proud of what they had done. When the narrator finds
the keys in the grass he describes them as being"...jewels in the first
tapering shaft of sunlight.“
• This is a sign that the narrator truly wants to leave Greasy Lake
because he sees the simple appearance of keys as something
precious. This could also be symbolic of the narrator wanting to
get away from the person he was trying to be.
Greasy Lake  THE NARRATOR
• The most significant sign of the narrator's character was towards the
end when the drunk girl looking for Al (decomposing in the lake)
asks is he and his friends wanted to party with her and her friend.
• The narrator expresses character development when he says: "I
wanted to get out of the car and retch, I wanted to go home to my
parents' house and crawl into bed." He then says that he felt like he
was about to cry when she asks if they wanted to do drugs with
the girl and her friend. In the end he didn't stay with the girls
which was something he would have done if he truly was as "bad"
as he thought himself to be.
Greasy Lake  THE NARRATOR
• The author presents this character as being far from anything
good or wholesome. He makes the character out to be flawed
and desperate to be rebellious that the narrator really has no
choice but to change from his usual ways.
• I think the author also made the narrator change because it
wouldn't be satisfying for the reader if he had stayed with the
girls, it would have made the narrator flat and disappointing.
But since the narrator's character was altered at the end it
showed that the narrator was capable of change.