Content Warning: This section references violence, attempted rape, and drug use.

The narrator introduces himself and his friends Digby and Jeff as bad in every way, shape, and form: “We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue” (8). The exaggerated quality of these details satirizes the persona of the bad boy and foreshadows that the boys are in fact putting on an elaborate act that gives them a sense of power and shared purpose. “Greasy Lake” then traces the unraveling of the “bad boy” identity and the violence this persona glamorizes. This unraveling reveals each character’s performance of “badness” to be a dangerous facade with real-life, irreparable consequences. References to films, books, and historical events draw connections between the boys’ violent behavior and everyday exposure to violence, further underscoring the performative nature of their actions and raising questions about Nature Versus Nurture and Male Violence. Meanwhile, the story’s first-person narration betrays the boys’ hidden innocence, even as they insist on the opposite.

The polluted setting of Greasy Lake serves multiple functions. In one sense, it is an exaggerated backdrop that parallels the boys’ behavior.