At this point, our narrator is terrified, but evidently not yet completely convinced that he isn't a bad character, possibly because he has managed to survive the fight. He has never been in a fight in his life, so to live to tell the tale is another way to prove his badness. He is still running away from his problems though, refusing to face the consequences of his own actions. The place is still described as being bordered by feculent undergrowth, as he hastens headlong into this mucky tepid water lake. The lake is his salvation, his refuge-just as he has been comfortable and safe in the sanctuary of his lustful, self-serving adolescent mindset for so long. When he stumbles upon the dead body of a biker, our narrator comes face to face with the reality of death. This is the end result of a seriously bad .
attitude, causing him to stumble back in horror and revulsion, and realize that his "mind" is being pulled into several different directions all at once. .
This biker had not obviously learned from the mistakes of his younger years, and has now paid the fatal and ultimate price for failing to do so. Appalled, and faced for perhaps the first time with his own mortality, our protagonist attempts to get away. Escaping from both his childish mentality and the muck of the lake is particularly difficult. He plunges face first into the corpse, and into the black mass of his own adolescent disposition. Finally, our narrator comprehends the true somberness of the situation, as though the dead man's spirit was somehow imparting upon him some intangible knowledge in the night, that a hard-fought lesson that he had given his life for, one that our young friend should take to heart. This moment truly represents a catharsis for our narrator; the death of a young punk and the birth of the decent man he would soon become. Digby and Jeff apparently experienced similar, though surely less intense, Each with an Epiphany of their own, they come out from hiding in the early morning, looking sheepish as they "gape in fear at the ravaged automobile.
