Greasy Lake

Content Warning: This section references violence.

T. C. Boyle uses juxtaposition—the pairing of unlike or contrasting things—to draw connections between disparate ideas, such as the innocence the boys still possess even as they commit acts of violence. The narrator’s description of the moments after he hits the “greasy character” is an example: “I was still holding the tire iron, a tuft of hair clinging to the crook like dandelion fluff, like down” (11). The words “down” and “fluff” evoke fragility and innocence even as the contrasting images of the tire iron and the man’s hair remind readers that the narrator has possibly killed a man. Later, the narrator imagines the circumstances that might have led to the dead man’s demise in the lake: “Shot during a murky drug deal, drowned while frolicking in the lake” (16). The use of the word “frolicking” conjures something childlike and innocent, now dead and gone. Similarly, when the narrator makes contact with the dead body, he says it “gave like a rubber duck, it gave like flesh” (13). The juxtaposition of decaying flesh with the image of a child’s toy reinforces the boys’ innocence as the narrator is in the process of losing it.