One key literary technique that influences how the plot unfolds is the first person narration. This is not an objective narrative, but one person's subjective account of what happened to him. We see only what the narrator sees, as if a camera is filming from his shoulder. If he doesn't see a plot detail, we don't see it either.
Second, the narrator's use of diction or language deceives the reader about how the plot will unfold. When he writes that he was heading to the lake with "two dangerous characters," and says they were "slick and quick" and "bad," we tend to believe him. It is only later that we find out that none of them are as tough as they think they are. However, the use of the a seemingly street-wise dialect leads us to believe otherwise.
Finally, the fast paceof the narration keeps the reader interested...
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in the story. For instance, in a fight scene, the narrator says: "I came at him like a kamikaze, mindless, raging," and we are engaged in the adrenalin-laced energy of the fight. This breathless, relentless pacing quickens the pace of the plot and keeps us reading.
The narrator has a symbolic "baptism" in the greasy lake. In this story, he is looking back on his life and particularly at a significant night during his naive youth. He and his friends act the part of rebels but they get a real taste of the dark side of life on this night he is describing. After the brawl and their sexual assault of the girl, the narrator retreats to the lake. This is not the purifying baptism noted in religious doctrine. It is an immersion in a greasy lake, during which he bumps into a corpse. He has been baptized by the dark side of life and this illustrates his own immoral actions as well as the immorality that exists in the world.
After they assault the girl from the car, they flee the scene. As he's leaving, the narrator hears the girl's screaming and sobbing and he notes the allusions to the Sabine women and Anne Frank. The Sabine women were an Italian tribe abducted and raped by the Romans. Anne Frank and her family were abducted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. These allusions emphasize the notion that the girl is the victim and they, the narrator and his friends, are the ones to blame.
The car keys are symbolic of his connection to his parents (it is their car) and the innocence of his youth. When he loses them, he loses this symbolic connection and, for him, the comfort of home. "The keys, the keys, why did I have to go and lose the keys?"