"We struck elaborate poses to show that we didn’t give a shit about anything.’’
From the first pages of the short story, the narrator reveals just how important the way a person looked was in the society where he and his friends lived in. The society in which he lived was a decadent one where good was gone almost entirely and the people who loved in that society did not cared about what happened to those around them. A great importance was given to the appearances a person had and thus the boys tried to appear much more dangerous than they were in reality. They tried to appear more dangerous through their poses and they put a great deal of effort into trying to appear more dangerous and ragged. But these efforts were in the end in vain as they discovered that not the appearance makes a person dangerous but rather their actions and the way they behave in society.
"This was nature.’’
The narrator describes the Greasy Lake as the place where everyone in the city went when they were looking for an adventure. The lake was an important place for them because there was a scent of possibility in the air. But the place was anything but natural and in fact was the perfect image of the natural environment destroyed by the technological advancements. The lack of natural elements influenced the people living in the city near the Greasy Lake and they reached the point where they could no longer tell right for wrong. Just like the highly destroyed natural environment in which the children lived became ‘’natural’’ for them, the depraved way of life they were living was the right way for them.
"I looked back. The girl was still standing there, watching us, her shoulders slumped, hands outstretched.’’
The writer ends his short story with the line from above. The teenagers, happy to be alive, left the Greasy Lake and left the girls who came to the Lake looking for their friend behind. One of the girls offered the narrator and his friends some type of drugs before they departed and they still remained fixed in the same positions, with her hands outstretched and holding the drugs in her open hand. This shows just how depraved the life in the city where the teenagers lived really was. They had access to drugs freely and in fact they were offered drugs out of nowhere by two girls looking for a thrill just like they were. But this did not bring them happiness. Instead, it only made them feel emptier and made them want to go even further looking for the next rush of adrenaline.
