The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton contains several conflicts, but I think that Ponyboy vs. Socs is the most crucial of the three. Very early on (pg 5), Ponyboy gets jumped by four Socs on his way home from a movie. One of them says that they’re “going to do you a favor, Grease. We’re gonna cut that long hair off for you… How would you like it to start at the chin?” I think that Ponyboy may have exaggerated the dialogue in his retelling, since he would have had a bad experience with being mugged. I doubt that some random rich kids who’d never met him would kill him for no reason on the street. However, he had even more bad experiences with the Socs besides just this mugging, which biased his narrative even more. Later (pg 55), Ponyboy and Johnny are confronted by Socs after they make friends with Cherry Valance, a Soc they met at the movies. …show more content…
I think that Ponyboy was upset and shaken by almost being killed, which would probably make slightly prejudiced against Bob. Bob was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing, and he most likely would not have attempted murder had he been sober. While it doesn’t make it legal, Ponyboy needs to realize that sometimes people cannot be held accountable for their actions. In the end (pg. 118), however, he starts to realize that Socs are people too. Randy, a Soc and Bob’s best friend, talks to Ponyboy before an upcoming fight and says that all Bob wanted was for someone to set limits for him, but no one ever