We all grow up, some of us lose our innocence, and some of us preserve it. Do you think you have preserved your innocence? In The Outsiders, the novel is mainly about Ponyboy Curtis, a teenage greaser, who faces many challenges and struggles, but yet in the end preserves his innocence. We also learn about other characters who don’t preserve their innocence and lose it at a young age. The Outsiders has a main theme of loss of innocence portrayed in the characters, Dally, Johnny and Ponyboy. In the story, Dally loses his innocence at a very young age. He started doing crimes around the age of 10, and he went to jail, which hardened him up. Hinton writes, “Dally had spent three years on the wild side of New York and had been arrested at the age …show more content…
This means that he was committing crimes at a young age, and it affects his older self now. Dally does not want Johnny and Ponyboy to become like him, and he wants them to preserve their innocence. Also in The Outsiders, Johnny had a rough childhood, making him lose his innocence when at a young age like Dally. Johnny had many hardships that contributed to his loss of innocence, including his abusive parents, and when the Socs almost beat him to death. Hinton writes, “Johnny was high-strung anyway, a nervous wreck from getting belted every time he turned around and from hearing his parents fight all the time.living in those conditions might have turned someone else rebellious and bitter; it was killing Johnny.” (11). The quote shows how living in the conditions Johnny lived in can make someone ‘rebellious and bitter’. Living in a household of turmoil would most likely make you lose your innocence and scare you. From this evidence, we can infer that Johnny living in a rough household contributed to him losing his innocence when he was still a child. Even though a handful of characters in The Outsiders lost their innocence, Ponyboy continues to preserve his