Family And Death In The Outsiders By S. E. Hinton

728 Words3 Pages

There are many times where family and death are demonstrated in life. In the case of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, family and death are commonly demonstrated. When Johnny dies, a very close friend of the Greaser Gang, a member who is deeply affected. Whereas, Ponyboy is also deeply affected, but he is able to handle this difficult situation because of one thing he has: a strong family.

Death is negatively powerful The Outsiders especially when somebody you really love is longer with you. The first character that is a close friend of Johnny is Dally. He really admired Johnny as a hero especially when he got hurt badly saving the children stuck in the burning church building. He suffered third-degree burns, and also got his back smashed …show more content…

However, Ponyboy did have the same reaction, but he didn’t do something harmful to himself. Now he is worried about losing his family because his brothers are so important to him. This is also what Dally was worried about when Johnny died. Moreover, Ponyboy and his brothers are now going to need to stick together because of the death of two people in their gang. Additionally, Darry is going to have to work even harder in his two jobs to keep his family together. Not only him, but everybody in the family is going to have to work harder and help each other out. Instead of Ponyboy moving on from his brother and his friend passing away, he lies to himself about this situation. In fact, according to the text it says, “I always have been kind of absent-minded, but man, then, I was lucky if I got home from school with the right notebooks and with both shoes on.” (169). This really indicates that because of his friend’s death it leads Ponyboy to doing poorly in school and reacting differently. Thanks to Darry, he is always checking over Ponyboy to make sure he’s not doing the wrong decision. Thankfully, later everything got back to normal for Ponyboy and the rest of his brothers in the family. As you can see, if it wasn’t for Darry taking care of Ponyboy, and everyone else helping out, Ponyboy wouldn’t of moved on from this