In T. Coraghessan BoyleÆs (1985, p. 1) Greasy Lake, we are treated to the madness and mayhem of a group of deviant teenagers who are all described by the author as ôdangerous characters.ö Indeed, the narrator and his two friends, Digby and Jeff will involve themselves in a beating, rape, and murder. In Alice MunroÆs (1968) An Ounce of Cure, we are provided with the story of a teenage girlÆs coming of age that shows how a young girl is often shaped more by what she thinks others desire of her than what she wishes to be. In both of these works, the overriding similarity is moral decay within society but each author interprets the implication of this decay on the individual differently.
In BoyleÆs (1985) Greasy Lake, we are told of three ôbadö boys who are friends and wish to get to Greasy Lake, a Mecca for decadent teens. There are no ambitions among this group to achieve or to engage in the norms and values endorsed by mainstream society. The only goals of the three ôgreasersö are achieved when they are ôquick with a sneer, able to manage a Ford with lousy shocks over a rutted and gutted blacktop road at eighty-five while rolling a joint as compact as a Tootsie Roll Pop stick,ö (Boyle, 1985, p. 2). The teenage narrator and his friends will come of age through their encounters with a really bad character, Bobby. Before the night is through, a woman is raped, Bobby is hit over the head with a tire iron, and a biker is killed. Nevertheless, all the narrator is concerned with, even after a corpse floats by him, is his lost keys, ôThe keys, the keys, why did I have to go and lose the keys,ö (Boyle, 1985, p. 7).
This characterization of silent and self-concerned youth is comparable to MunroÆs characterization of the insecure teenager of low self-esteem we encounter in An Ounce of Cure. This girl derives her entire self-esteem from external sources based on the opinions and expectations of others, especially...