Content Warning: This section references violence, attempted rape, and drug use.

The idea of nature—both in the sense of “natural world” and of “what is natural”—permeates the story. The narrator opens with an assertion that links the two meanings of the word and frames the boys’ “bad” behavior as instinctive:

We went up to the lake […] to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature (9).

The passage implies that the boys see their own “badness” as completely normal—as much of a given as the frogs and crickets making their noises at the lake.

However, several details work to undercut this portrayal. First, the description of the lake lingers on its pollution: It is clearly not in its “natural” state but rather corrupted by human activity. The personification of the lake, as when T. C. Boyle describes its surface as covered in “scabs,” further encourages readers to identify the boys with the lake and to interpret their actions as societally driven.