Loss Of Innocence In The Outsiders

On April 24, 1967, S.E. Hinton published the book The Outsiders. Then sixteen years later director Francis Ford Coppola’s movie version of The Outsiders was released on March 23, 1983. The book is about a young boy named Ponyboy who lives with his two older brothers because his parents were killed in a automobile accident. Ponyboy goes through a lot of tough times because he is a part of this group known as the Greasers. The Greasers are a group that are known for being from the poor side of town and the Socs are the rich kids on the other side of town. Throughout the entire book the two groups kept fighting and then something terrible happened that changed Ponyboy’s life forever. The movie and book have many differences

“The Outsiders”, by S.E. Hinton, is centered around Ponyboy’s path to maturity and the life lessons he learns along the way. The novel follows Ponyboy, a greaser, and his gang’s conflict with the Socials, a rival gang. In it, he learns to not judge people hastily and reject gang mentality. Ponyboy also loses his innocence. The following paragraphs will explore his growth throughout “The Outsiders”.

Later, Johnny conveys his guilt to Ponyboy when he says: “‘There sure is a lot of blood in people.’”(Hinton 74), nearly quoting Shakespeare in Macbeth. In a later conversation with Johnny, Ponyboy gets thinking about this new world he has been thrust into. In the text he says: “I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me.”(Hinton 76) This shows how Ponyboy likes when the hero can beat the villain and get a pretty sunset at the end. But now Ponyboy has to deal with the real-world effects of violence, and he doesn’t like it. This marks one of Ponyboy’s first major changes of his mindset on violence.

No one can control what decisions, situations, people, and life is thrown at them so they can't fully control if it will or will not chip away at you and your innocence. Throughout the poem gold is slowly becoming scarce and is slowly fading away like life. A line from the poem says “Nothing gold can stay” saying through all the ups and downs, you can’t make you innocence stay. Gold or innocence is precious and only lasts a short amount of time. A boy who was bombarded with so many treacherous and soul snapping moments is Ponyboy Curtis. His parents died, his best friend died, he has little money, and had seen things that most adults have. With all these bumps in life's path it makes it hard for him to not drop innocence along the way. “My parents are dead. I live here with just Darry and Soda, my brothers.” is showing Ponyboy has two younger guardians which could lead him down the wrong path or one of them could leave him. The more and more Ponyboy was kicked around it seemed as if his feelings left his body. Near the end of the book Ponyboy shows he still has good left in him because he picked up a bottle so someone wouldn't get a flat tire. Comparing Ponyboy and the Soc’s, he has been through alot worse stuff than them.

Ponyboy Curtis - The novel's fourteen-year-old narrator and protagonist, and the youngest of the greasers. Ponyboy's literary interests and academic accomplishments set him apart from the rest of his gang. Because his parents have died in a car accident, Ponyboy lives with his brothers Darry and Sodapop. Darry repeatedly accuses Ponyboy of lacking common sense, but Ponyboy is a reliable and observant narrator. Throughout the novel, Ponyboy struggles with class division, violence, innocence, and familial love. He matures over the course of the novel, eventually realizing the importance of strength in the face of class bias.

“The Outsiders” identifies the 60’s, illustrating the violence between groups, often involving a group’s social class. For instance, the violent tensions between the Socs and Greasers lead to Bob’s death, Johnny’s death, as well as many injuries throughout both gangs. The book “The Outsiders” is written by S.E. Hinton and is portrayed through the eyes of a high school student in Tulsa, OK where S.E. Hinton grew up. Hinton began writing “The Outsiders” in 1965 at the age of 17 and the book was finally published in 1967 when she was 19. The difference in perspective upon the society and social class creates issues throughout “The Outsiders” and since the Socs and Greasers assume the problems will be solved with violence, they take action.

Pony has shown in multiple scenarios that he is struggling with maturity and acting his own age, not older. First off, on page 74 both Pony and Johnny break down when recalling the night before. They did this because they realized how serious the situation that they are in is, and did not know how to handle all of the emotions and felt like they could not let out these emotions because they want to be much more mature than

Ponyboy Curtis has lived a very rough life. Both his parents died, leaving him, Sodapop and Darry to take care of each other. Darry had to get a job and stop going to school; he looked out for his brothers the same as their father figure which they had lost. Sodapop stopped going to school because he felt that he was too stupid, as for Ponyboy he had to stay in school and always bring home good grades. The three brothers still have to look out for each other and stay out of trouble as much as possible. In the church, he starts talking about a poem and doesn’t know exactly what it means. Each line can be compared to his life, past, and current experiences, along with his

After Johnny’s death, Ponyboy finds a letter written by Johnny that reads, “When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep it that way, it’s a good way to be,” (178). Johnny urges Ponyboy to embrace his youth and innocence by not yielding to the greaser lifestyle. He insists on Ponyboy seeking his full potential. Ponyboy acknowledges that there are different stories beyond one’s appearance like himself because although the society previously consider him a nuisance to the community, they are proved wrong after he transforms into a hero after saving children from a church fire, which contributes to his dynamic change. Even the close-minded public are subject to their own change of mind. Johnny’s letter also leaves a lifelong impact on Ponyboy’s perspective on the importance of family because the absence of family in Johnny’s life makes Ponyboy treasure the atypical family he has, whether it may the greasers as a whole. In all, a number of people influence Pony to change his views on people and his

Have you ever read a very hard hitting and the phenomenal story about rival gangs and the effect it has on the lives of the people and the society. In The Outsiders, is a story of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis and his two older brothers, Soda and Darry. The boys are orphans and struggle to stick together in their lower-class neighborhood, known as the East Side. They and their friends are part of a gang of tough street boys called the Greasers. Even though other people might think you're unimportant and below them. You will always have your friends and family. In The Outsiders, we see the idea of the difference in the society based on the economic level of the characters, honor among the lawless and violence among the youth.

At the beginning of the book, Ponyboy is in intelligent, young teen, but he lacks the perspective to understand the environment around him. He can only see his side of the story and fails to understand why others act the way they do. The first example of this is his oldest brother Darry. He thinks Darry hates him because he is always giving Ponyboy a hard time about his lack of common sense, his grades,...

The Outsiders is a novel written by Susan Eloise Hinton, also known as S.E Hinton. The setting of the story takes place in the 1960s. The Outsiders is written in first person view, by Ponyboy Curtis. The story revolves around the greasers and Socs. The Socs are the west side rich kids, they wrecked houses and “threw beer blasts for kicks”. While the Greasers were the east side kids, they “drove old souped-up cars, held up gas stations and had gang fights once in a while.” One of the conflicts the characters face is man vs man, which is because the greasers and Socs don’t get along, this is because they feel superior to each other. They both had different ways of lives, they did different things for fun, and they did not understand each other. This conflict was later resolved towards the end of the story when Ponyboy speaks to Randy about no longer fighting after Bob’s death.

In Chapter 3, another conversation is brought into play. In this Chapter the conversation between Ponyboy and

The character that I had chosen to analyze was Ponyboy Curtis in the movie, The Outsiders (Coppola, 1983). I chose this character because the movie revealed how Ponyboy got to where he is mentally and everything that had occurred to get him to that point. I will analyze the adolescent phase of Ponyboy’s life. The theme of The Outsiders is how love can affect the relationships of close friends. The theories and theorists that support my analysis are Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial theory, Albert Bandura’s Observational Learning, Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Systems theory: Microsystem (Sigelman, 2015). From those theories and theorists the following points will be analyzed: identity, peer pressure, self-worth, and dependence.

When ponyboy returned to school, he was in a deep state of depression. His grades suffered, and he isolated himself from other kids. “People I know would come right up to me, and people I didn’t know would come right up and ask about the whole mess. Sometimes even teachers. And my history teacher-