The central irony of the story has to do with the three boys as "dangerous" characters. In a sense, the irony comes from how the boys are self-consciously aware of how they are pretending to be tough. But in another sense, the irony lies in the surprise they feel at the violence they commit. In fact, when the narrator takes a tire iron to the man in the blue car, the boys' pretend toughness turns into actual attempted murder. One way to read the story is as an account how how quickly a pose can lead into the real thing, or how pretending to be one way can mask other, more primal fears. The attempted gang rape of the girl is an extension of this idea: the boys, surprised by their lust for real violence, naturally turn on the girl in an act of true savagery.
A second kind of...
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irony concerns the way the story is told, and the narrative distance the narrator creates between himself and the events he relates. The self-deprecating, sarcastic tone of the narration belies the actual seriousness of the story. While it is not clear what the ramifications of their night at the lake might be, the sense is that somehow, as privileged college kids, they will avoid any serious punishment. It is as if, through comparing his decision to fight rather than apologize to McFarlane's decision to defend Khe Sanh, the narrator is at once calling the decision stupid and making it into a bit of joke. The story is littered with allusions of this type, which give it a kind of wise-guy quality. This suggests that this story about a time when the narrator pretended to be a tough guy is perhaps part of another story, in which the narrator, pretending to be a literate, knowing writer, is telling the story ofGreasy Lake to show how much smarter he is now. Either way, the irony lies in the difference between what happened at the lake and the attitude of the narrator to those events.
One irony in the story is that the main characters are looking for happy hijinks and a good time at Greasy Lake, but they end up having one of the most horrible times possible. All they want to do as their adventure begins is have fun and cause a little low-level trouble, but they end up in far over their heads. The narrator, for example, fears he has killed a man with a tire iron, ends up encountering a corpse in Greasy Lake, and finds his car, which he has borrowed from his parents, smashed up with the same tire iron. He and his two friends also almost gang rape a young woman, showing how far they have strayed from innocent antics.
Another irony is that the narrator and his friends think they are very tough and cool at the beginning of the story, even though they are sheltered college students living at home with their moms and dads for the summer. Ironically, while wishing to display their bravado, they discover just how soft and "uncool" they really are. For the narrator, the evening, including his "baptism" in the lake into the reality of death, is one in which he begins to grow up and face life more realistically.