Compare And Contrast Darry And Soda

Synthesis-4

In life, there are many occurrences where the parents have died and the children are left alone. But the same thing doesn’t happen in each scenario. Sometimes the children die themselves. Others live in orphanages, or maybe are adopted later. And others yet manage to live on their own. Pony, Darry, and Soda are three who have lost their parents, but ended living on their own. They are part of a gang, whom they considered as family. However, the story does not give information about if the parents were alive or dead when they first joined the gang. They joined the gang because of their social class as outcasts, but not because they were lacking the ability to live and function on their own.

There are little quotes here and there,

If they had joined the gang out of need, it would have most likely because their parents died and they wanted a new family. However, since their parents died after they joined the gang, they most likely joined the gang out of want. It also says, “Or I could have gotten one of the gang to come along, one of the four boys Darry and Soda and I have grown up with and consider family. We're almost as close as brothers; when you grow up in a tight-knit neighborhood like ours you get to know each other real well.” (Hinton, 4). This phrase says that they were in the gang because they lived near each other in the neighborhood, and being neighbors made them into a

Darry, the eldest, had been a very popular person in school, captain in the football team, and was voted ‘Boy of the year’. The “...only reason Darry couldn't be a Soc was us [the gang].” (Hinton, 108). If Darry didn’t have his brothers to take care of, or the gang to be with, he could have been one of the people that beat up Socs, and got drunk. Another reason that Darry was unable to become a Soc was that their parents died. As the oldest child, it became his responsibility to take care of his family after his parents passed away. If their parents were alive, he could have gone to college. “But we just didn't have the money for him to go to college, even with the athletic scholarship he won. And now he didn't have time between jobs to even think about college.” (Hinton, 15). If their parents were still alive, the parents would have been able to get a job and earn money, while Darry, as well as Soda, might have had a chance to go to college. Instead, Darry and Soda now work very hard to support themselves as well as Pony. If Darry had gone to college, he might have become a Soc, and separate himself from his family and