Cherry Valance In The Outsiders

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In the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders, by author S.E Hinton, Cherry Valance seemed to go from a narrow minded Soc, to a open and accepting young woman that doesn’t identify to either side by the ending of the novel. This is shown from her first encounters with the greasers, to when she seemed to be genuine and help out the greasers to finally when she openly expressed kindness and love to the greasers. The novel illustrates early on that Cherry Valance was a young teenage girl that lacked sympathy for a select amount of greasers. On the other hand, She grew a friendship with a fellow greaser named Ponyboy towards the beginning of the novel. At the beginning … for example in the text it is noticeable that Cherry was not …show more content…

She seems to show a glimpse of caring when she stepped in when the greasers needed her the most. As the book moves forward, tension between a group of socs and two greasers named Johnny and ponyboy arises at a park in the middle of the night. The tension lead to a fight, which lead to a murder. That was committed by the gangs “lost puppy” Johnny. Following this incident, Cherry agreed to testify in defense of the greasers. Which left all greasers including pony boy shocked, ”So Cherry Valance, The cheerleader, Bobs girl, The soc,was trying to help us. No it wasn’t Cherry The Soc, It was Cherry the dreamer who watched sunsets and couldn’t stand fights. It was hard to believe that a Soc would help us,” (Hinton, 73) Initially, this shows that Cherry is starting to grow fond of the greasers or at least does not want to see anything bad happen to them. If you were to go deeper in the text you can gather that this is important to the whole novel because from this act, it is emphasized through the entire novel, that the greasers and the socs never were to mix or bond with one another. But by Cherry doing this act, It altered the opinion of most greasers and some