The most important part of the story is when the narrator discovers the dead carcass in the lake. He realizes all the trouble's he has caused in fives minutes - he"d struck down a man with a iron tire rod, tried to rape a woman and now is hiding next to a dead corpse bobbing in the lake. Hiding there watching he sees his parents Bel Air being destroyed by his antagonists and all the occurrences that has happened to him that night running in his mind, his moment of epiphany occurs. With the dead man's corpse beside him, he realizes that this is the life of a "tough guy," laying dead in a lake and floating around for three days. He realizes what living life like a dangerous is really like, and not for him. He discovers who he really is, that he is not a truly bad man, and is really a "safe" person. He comes out of the lake with a new mindset then before, he also sees a different side of nature after coming out from the Greasy Lake : "There was a smell in air, raw and sweet at the same time, the smell of the sun firing buds and opening blossoms." He does not view and feel everything as so dark and dangerous anymore, after coming out of a life and death situation himself, he is relieved and thankful for that quiet and peacefulness there is in life. A changed, different person he also declines when the two girls asks him to smoke a joint with them. .
The protagonist Sammy in Updike's "A&P" is also 19 years of age. Sammy is a character whose conduct seems to suggest that he is from a low middle class family. Unlike the character in "Greasy Lake," he is not provided financially by his parents and has to work for his own things. He is disrespectful of his customers, for he describes the old woman who gives him a hard time as a witch, who if were born at the right time "would have burned her over in Salem". He describes the customers other than the three girls as "sheeps." His lack of maturity is even clear in which he describes the girl he is infatuated with as "queenie" (p15) or even when he narrates how the chubby girl looked better from farther away then up close.
