How Does Ponyboy Change In The Outsiders

In the novel The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, the character Ponyboy’s opinion on the Socs changes throughout the book. When Ponyboy's parents passed, his older brother Darry took care of Ponyboy and Sods. They and a few other friends are all in a gang. They are also all greasers, which are like a lower class. The SOCS are the rich upper class. Ponyboy and his gang are constantly getting into fights with the Socs. This causes Ponyboy to think poorly of all socs. He thinks they are rich kids who have perfect lives. By the end of the book, he realizes that not all SOCS are the same when he meets Cherry and Randy. When Cherry treats Ponyboy well and when Randy talks to Ponyboy like he is a human and not anything less, he realizes that not all socs

When Cherry and Ponyboy get popcorn during the movie, Ponyboy tells Cherry all the bad things that have happened to him. Cherry says to him, "All socs aren't like that. You have to believe me Ponyboy. Not all of us are like that." (pg 34). This is when Ponyboy begins to trust Cherry when he realizes she is not like all the other socs. He realizes that socs are not just rich kids, but they also have tough lives. When Cherry and Ponyboy realize that they both enjoy watching sunsets, he realizes that they have more in common than he thought. Another example of when Ponyboy begins to change his opinion of the Socs is on page 118. Right before the Rumble, Randy talks to Ponyboy. After they finish Ponyboy says to Two-Bits, ``He ain’t a Soc. He’s just a guy. He just wanted to talk." Ponyboy thinks to himself, "Socs were just guys after all. Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too." This shows how differently Ponyboy thinks of the Socs at the end of the book. He realizes that they are more than just rich kids who don't have problems. He realizes that they are just people who don’t have perfect lives, like