Reality Check

Although we do not know the exact place and time of Boyle’s “Greasy Lake,” we do know that the setting plays a significant part in how the story relates to the protagonist. The setting of the story is in the outskirts of a large town in the North East, probably upstate New York (Ithaca), since Digby “allowed his father to pay his tuition at Cornell.” The main part of the setting is a murky lake, littered with trash, beer bottles and junk--even a dead body. This greasy lake mirrors the main character and his friends because all of its ugliness and mischief is caused from the outside encroaching on its purity. The narrator comments on the lake’s former name: “The Indians had called it Wakan,” a reference to the clarity of its waters. “Now it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” The lake apparently used to be beautiful and clear, now known for its dirtiness and mucked up w...