Think specifically about the setting of the "Greasy lake" at night and then the setting of the lake in the morning as the boys come out of hiding. There is a very distinct contrast in these two descriptions. Explain why this is.

Greasy Lake is a story about what happens when one's fantasies are put to the test of reality. In the beginning of the story, the narrator and his friends are shown to think of themselves as “tough characters,” but in fact they are just teens trying out different identities that they don't truly understand. The setting reenforces this—the lake at night is a place of mystery and uncertainty. The fight that is the central action of the story is a product of this mystery: first, because they mistake one car for another; second, the identity of the man they fight is never clear. The whole sequence, from arriving to the lake, to possibly killing the man with a blow to the head with the tire iron, to the aborted rape of his girlfriend, all takes place in a kind of fog, as if the events were somehow disconnected from reality. When another car comes and the narrator tries to “swim for it” across the lake and finds the corpse and watches as his mother’s car is vandalized, it is as if the reality of his situation finally hits him.
In the daylight, things become clearer. The narrator and his friends emerge from their hiding places; the car, though damaged, is still drivable. There is a sense that they’ve come to realize that being “tough characters” is not what they had thought it would be. It is as if the light of day has chastened them. When the girls show up and start asking about “Al,” the owner of a motorcycle parked at the lake, the narrator says he hasn’t seen him, although the implication is that the body in the lake must have been Al’s. The three friends drive away in their broken car, and the reader is left with the sense that their days of being “tough characters” are over.