Johnny Cade Essay

Johnny Cade is 16 years old. He lives in a lower class town in Oklahoma with alcoholic and abusive parents who don't care about him.They make Johnny feel insignificant and worthless, Like they could care less about where he is and whats hes doing. Johnny is a greaser and part of a gang of 5 other people who actually love and appreciate him. When Johnny was 13 he got beat up by the Socs. He was severely injured and was left with a lot of trauma. Three years later when Johnny and his friend Pony suddenly get jumped by the Socs, Johnny stabs and kills one of them to save his friend. Based on Johnny's life events, we can place him in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Erikson’s Stages of Development, and Jung’s Stages of Life.

In Maslow's Hierarchy

It's too late for Johnny and Pony, so they are forced to fight. “Johnny's hand [goes] to his back pocket” and he reaches for his switchblade. Because they are outnumbered 2-5, Pony gets captured and the Socs try to drown him in the nearby fountain. To save Pony, Johnny stabs Bob, one of the Socs, with his switchblade and kills him. When Pony confronts him and asks why he did that, Johnny responds with an unsure tone in his voice “I had to. They were drowning you, Pony. They might have killed you.” (57) We can relate Johnny's feelings during that confrontation with Erikson's Stages of Development. In Erikson's School Age Stage he states that “Success leads to a sense of competence, while failure results in a feeling of inferiority.” We see this in Johnny's life because he did successfully save Pony and prove that he could defend himself and others, but Johnny also had to kill another person because they were more powerful than him. The Socs came from good backgrounds and had parents there to support them, so this would evidently make Johnny feel inferior to him. Since Bob is now dead, Johnny and Pony have to flee from the town to escape the police. They stay in a church that was recommended by one of their friends. “[They] are in the middle of nowhere; the nearest house [being]