In T. C. Boyle’s Greasy Lake, the lake is a central character in the story. How does the lake change from the beginning of the story to the end?

At first, the lake is a place where the narrator and his friends enjoy all the carefree and semi-wild carousing of youth: they enjoy the lake as a natural place, a backdrop to drinking beer, smoking pot, watching girls, and, as the narrator puts it, "howl[ing] at the stars" while listening to loud rock and roll. The lake, as a character, is innocent.

By the end of the story, the lake is no longer so...

At first, the lake is a place where the narrator and his friends enjoy all the carefree and semi-wild carousing of youth: they enjoy the lake as a natural place, a backdrop to drinking beer, smoking pot, watching girls, and, as the narrator puts it, "howl[ing] at the stars" while listening to loud rock and roll. The lake, as a character, is innocent.

By the end of the story, the lake is no longer so carefree anymore. In it, the narrator has experienced a kind of baptism that takes him from innocence to experience. Most specifically, he encounters a dead body in the lake, and suddenly, this carefree place is where he comes face to face, literally, with mortality. He also watches his mother's car get demolished and realizes that, in the grand scheme of things, he is not as wild and tough as he had believed. The lake changes in the course of the story from a place to escape reality to a place where the narrator encounters reality full-force.