Richard Boyle Essays

Franz Kafka starts his story, The Metamorphosis, by transforming his main character into a vermin, one of the most disgusting and loathsome insects. With Gregor’s transformation, Kafka is exposing a metaphorical view of how life can be shown in a tangible, physical way. Gregor’s metamorphosis consists in his insides coming out. His new state of being reflects his life and his inner thoughts. A cockroach is a tangible representation of how he feels about his life and the relationship with his family

Martin Scorsese is a famous hollywood producer and director that makes real life stories into blockbuster films. His biggest films The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas share the same kind of story even though they are both based on true stories about different people with different backgrounds. Both the stories share how the main character is a success driven individual that strives and achieves a life of excess and the feeling of being invincible. Scorsese uses the same kind of pause stop directing

resiliency, and perspective. Consequently a person's perception of the adversity they have experienced may have a significant impact on how said conflict affects their character. The protagonists Jamal and Salim in the film Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle illustrate how hardship can form an individual's character in vastly different ways, with Jamal’s integrity and empathy contrasting sharply with Salim's willingness to compromise his values in the face of adversity. Salim’s opportunism as a consequence

Page 70 of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi depicts the main character of the story, the young Satrapi’s despair at the execution of her uncle Anoosh at the hands of the post-1979 revolution Iranian government. The pretense for his execution is that he is a Russian spy, which, at least from the young main character’s point of view, appears to be blatantly untrue. The author’s shock at this apparently unjustified killing is metaphorically expressed through a confrontation with God, a character in the

Imagine getting put in jail for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread. This is what Jean Valjean had to experience. Jean Valjean, the main character of Tom Hooper’s drama Les Miserables, gets out of prison, where he was put for stealing a loaf of bread, at the beginning of the movie. After being told that he’d be let out of jail, his dreams of living a normal life were utterly shattered within a couple seconds. This happened because Javert gave him a slip of paper marking him as a ‘dangerous’

T. Coraghessan Boyle is a 66 year old American author who describes himself as a “pampered punk” (Boyle). Mr. Boyle used his short story, Greasy Lake to demonstrate not only the shift in the social standard of the era but also the struggles and consequences faced by so many as a result of poor decision making. He described it as an era where “courtesy and winning went out of style” and “where it was good to be bad” (Boyle). The three main characters of this saga, who can only be adequately described

Chicxulub, a short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle, is about a couple’s journey through the “death” of their seventeen year old daughter. The main character and father of the teenage girl in the car accident relates his knowledge of meteors and asteroids to describe his and his wife’s adventure through their own home and hospital. He also relates the death of “his daughter” to the end of the world. This is why I think the author’s intended theme for Chicxulub is that “losing someone you love is worse

Greasy Lake “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle is a story about a 19 year old young boy, the narrator, who learns that his bad boy image is just an image. Describing himself and his friends, Digby and Jeff, as “dangerous characters” (Boyle 77), he soon realizes that he may not be ready for such a title. Out with his friends one summer night, the narrator, Digby and Jeff head to Greasy Lake in hopes of getting into some type of “adventure” (Boyle 78). Thinking that they have spotted their friends

Tom Boyle did a great job in the writing and describing the setting in the story “Greasy Lake”. The words he uses and the way he puts together his sentences makes it easy for the reader to visualize the setting. The setting in Greasy Lake makes you feel as if you were there and the description makes it seem as if it were not long ago. Boyle described everything from what they wore to the feeling of touching a floating dead body. The setting of this story is very important because the time period

The Woe of Flotsam and Jetsam and the Guide to Escapism “Flotsam and Jetsam” is a short story that appeared in the collection “Elsewhere: There” (2012) and is written by the Scottish writer Alan Bissett. It tells the story of our Scottish protagonist, Kate, who has travelled to Zanzibar from Glasgow in an attempt to experience as much as possible while she can still afford to do so. She stays at a five-star network of hotels and is isolated from the townsmen. At a walk along the beach, six different

In the short story Greasy Lake, the author T. Coraghessan Boyle styles his writing like a careless young adult and it assists in the set up of the story. Greasy Lake is written in first person point of view leading the main character to tell his rendition of the events that occurred including his own opinions. The way that Boyle swears and writes in an almost lazy manner at the beginning of the story makes the perspective of the storyline believable. “We were nineteen. We were bad. We read Andre

Greasy “Greasy Lake” is a short story written by T. Coraghessan Boyle. It is a dark, plot driven, first person point-of-view recounting of a group of young men and their life changing adventure one night. They go looking for trouble and end up “biting off more than they can chew.” The drastic chain of events that follow leads to the forced maturation of the narrators’ character. The unnamed narrator and his friends: Jeff and Digby are a trio of suburbanites feigning “dangerous” personas. During a

Cool Teenagers “Greasy lake,” by Coraghessan Boyle, the short story focuses on three nineteen-year-old boys. They want to be cool and bad character. They are planning to celebrate their boring summer vacation night in the greasy lake. Boys are already drink beer, some marijuana. They reach at the greasy lake at 2 a.m. They see one of their friend’s car in the lake. They try to embarrass their friend because he is there with his girlfriend. The boys wanted to be bad with his friend because they are

In the story “Greasy Lake” by T.C. Boyle, the author utilizes the physical setting of Greasy Lake to reflect on the nuances and effects of American culture at the time. He accomplishes this by using the lake to represent the group’s (narrator, Digby, Jeff) shift in character throughout the story while also using the environment as social commentary on the state of America. The effects of these methods are exuberant and successful in what type of story Boyle is trying to convey. The lake itself

Humans consider polar bears as one of the cutest animals on the planet. Not only are they adorable, but they are also going extinct because of the warming temperatures in the Arctic. But what the public does not know is that the warmer weather is not the only thing killing off these animals; it is truly cannibalism. Rod Sterling's story, "Monsters Are Due on Maple street," reveals this surprising truth in a similar way. The story takes place in an ordinary neighborhood that is supposedly being attacked

In “Balto” written by T. Coraghessan Boyle and “Blue Water Djinn” by Tea Obreht both of the main characters mature and have a turning point in their lives that leads them to ultimately mature at the end/resolution of the story. “Balto” is about a girl who is told to lie for her father in court in order for him to not have his children taken away. In the story the father is an alcoholic who picks his children up from school late and drunk. When he does this he also hits a kid on a bike and asks his

After some time they then show up from their hiding place and when surveying the damaged car, another vehicle jerks into the lake. The occupants of the car are two women who examine a motorcycle (Boyle). In addition, according to them, the bike was owned by Al, "That's his bike over there, Al's”, and it crosses the narrator's mind that the corpse he saw in the lake must be Al, but he remains silent. Later the women invite the boys to party. Due

Greasy Lake Setting Analysis In the short story “Greasy Lake”, T. Coraghessan Boyle devises a setting that reflects the state of morality and corruption within society’s youth. He creates an appropriate atmosphere in order to develop, and for the reader to better understand, the characters of the story. Boyle achieves this by focusing the story at Greasy Lake, in which he controls the Lake as both a setting and character. The description of Greasy Lake is displayed in an unnerving, distasteful

"This has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard," remarks the narrator and protagonist of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, almost as if aware of the fantastical interweaves within the otherwise realistic, believable novel. In many of his works, Murakami has adopted this signature style of portraying the unbelievable and far-fetched in realistic settings, and is one of numerous writers and artists to have done so throughout the years. This technique

People learn from the mistakes they make; Sometimes it takes many mistakes for someone to learn a lesson. In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake”, “bad” boys take on many conflicts which ultimately lead to them to realize they are not who they believe they are. The boys would always go on late night car rides while drinking, in search of something “bad” to do. The three boys eventually found a friend’s car, or so they thought. Thinking it would be funny, they decided to mess with the wrong person