a woman, encountered a dead body, and saw his mother's car vandalized. The car keys are his and his friends' way out of a horrible situation.

The final bit of symbolism is the sight he sees as he departs Greasy Lake. The stoned woman holding out her arm to offer them drugs is left behind at Greasy Lake because it is where her milieu will always be found, whereas the middle-class boys are able to drive back to the comfort of their homes and lives on upward trajectories.

There are three symbols that seem to illustrate the theme of the story (the fraud of being "bad") handily: 

1. The Lake.
2. The Keys.
3. The Car.

Let's examine each of these symbols in greater detail. 

First, the lake. Setting is often an overlooked symbol when considering the theme of a story. But the place where a story happens can tell us much about its content. 

Greasy Lake is "fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans." This is a bad place; the kind of place where rough folk hang out. It's a place to "smoke pot" and "watch a girl take off her clothes." Simply being in a place like this sets up the kind of plot that can occur. We're not going to be reading about any tea parties taking place at Greasy Lake. 

But, like everything else in the story, the things that seem bad about it turn out to be totally inconsequential in the face of true horror. Sure, the water is murky. Sure, drugs are exchanged and used on its shores. But all of that cannot compare to the dead body our narrator finds soaking in the water.

In fact, the discovery of the dead body makes even the horrible evening the narrator has experienced seem small--"my car was wrecked; he was dead." 

In this way, the lake serves as a symbol of stark juxtaposition. Its very presence and nature compares what seems bad with actual, true bad. 

Second, the keys. Our narrator thinks himself a bad boy. "We were all dangerous characters then," he says, repeating the phrase "we were bad" as a sort of mantra throughout the text. 

"We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine." 

The boys dress and act as they think a bad person should act. 

And yet, the narrator is very clear that the events of the horrific evening are only the result of an accident...well, two accidents: the dropping of the keys and the misidentification of the car. 

The plot of the story is very much what one would expect from real "bad" people. The three boys get in a fight, they nearly rape a girl, they discover a dead body, their car gets beat up, etc. But our three protagonists are not really all that bad. They are frauds. They only get into this mess because a prank on a friend goes wrong. 

Thus, the boys themselves are a symbol. They highlight the falsity of pretending to be bad. 

Finally, the car. The car is a similar symbol. Late in the story, after the car has been destroyed and the scary men have left, the three boys are alone in their wreck of a car. Two strangers come upon them and see the state of the car. One says, "Hey, you guys look like some bad characters--been fightin', huh?" 

This, of course, is a total mistake. The state of the car is a result of the three boys hiding in the woods. Because they are hiding, the scary men beat the car up instead of the boys. The tragic state of the car actually proves that the boys are cowards at heart, not that they are "bad characters."

The car is another symbol of the fraud present in calling oneself "bad."  

The lake of T.C. Boyle's story "Greasy Lake" symbolizes the changing perceptions of the narrator.

In the beginning of the narrative, the lake represents a spot that is secluded from "the world of 'do-gooders'" where teens can secretly engage in illicit behavior and escape the consequences. However, the pretense of safety in dangerous behavior becomes perilous itself as the narrator and his friends find themselves confronted with serious injury when in their drunkenness they mistake a car for that of a friend's. Instead of their friend Tony emerging from the car, "a bad greasy character" with steel-toed boots confronts the boys, and inflicts serious injury upon them. After the narrator pulls out a tire iron, he and his friends defeat their foe. Then, they turn their attention to the girlfriend, who comes shrieking out of the other car. Now, their minds turn from violence to lust as they try to assault her.

But, headlights coming toward them arrest their actions and send the narrator wading into the lake as he flees what he thinks may be the police. As he wades deeper, thinking to plunge under the water, the narrator senses that he has blundered onto "another greasy character." This one fills him with horror. This is "greasy primitivism" at its lowest, for it is a dead body. With an illuminated perception, the narrator realizes the foolishness of his and his friends' behaviors. He acknowledges with a new maturity from this experience that there are dire repercussions to illicit conduct. 

Further, as he listens, the narrator hears the cursing of the "greasy character" that he and his friends have beaten. This "greasy character" and a buddy, who has pulled up, call out to the narrator and his friends. When there is no response, they decide to strike the station wagon with a tire iron, breaking the windshield and seriously damaging the body of the vehicle. Then they pull away. Quickly, the boys hurry back to the station wagon and are able to escape after the narrator suddenly spots his keys. As the vehicle hobbles along, the narrator notices that "[T]here was a sheen of sun on the lake," symbolizing his enlightenment.

The Greasy Lake to which the boys have come as a shelter from the consequences of bad behavior has transformed itself in their perceptions to a place of horror. Yet, in experiencing this horror, the narrator, at least, has matured and "seen the light" of acting morally.