How Does Trauma Affect Johnny's Identity

S.E. Hinton’s young adult realistic fiction novel The Outsiders is about a gang of boys called the greasers whose relationship is thicker than blood. The greasers are seen as dirty and have a bad reputation while their enemies the soc a higher-class gang have a good reputation. As the story progresses problems begin to appear as the gang makes some bad decisions. Their world is taken upside down though when a member of the gang named Johnny kills a soc. The issue of pain and Trauma that comes throughout the book as everyone struggles is shown in the story The Outsider by S.E. Hinton. The story represents that deep-seated trauma affects your interpretation of your identity in the world around you as it can lead you to actions that without that

Johnny the “mascot” member of the greasers as Ponyboy says, confesses to Ponyboy the youngest member of the greasers and the smartest one that he is "scared of his own shadow" and that he has "never had anybody to be scared for [him] before." (Hinton 4) Johnny says this because the higher class rich kid gang, the soc, beat him up severely. Now due to that trauma, he has to look over his back as he's scared he's going to get jumped. Thanks to the trauma of almost dying to a jump Johnny thinks of himself as weak; he tries to prove himself through many actions which lead to trouble. Besides that Johnny also has trauma that made him do certain things as well. Johnny later in the story kills a handsome soc named Bob with a pocket knife then says once Ponyboy wakes up, “I killed him,” slowly. (Hinton 56) Due to needing to protect Ponyboy, he stabbed Bob who was jamming Ponyboy’s head into a fountain. From what I saw Johnny was scared his trauma made him react because he thought Ponyboy was going to die or get the same trauma in which he did. In that moment of stabbing the soc I think Johnny snapped he felt weak he could