ipl-logo

Misjudgement In 'The Outsiders'

836 Words4 Pages

Clara Johnson Ms. Baiden English 1 Honors 12 February 2023 Misjudgement in Literature Misjudgement can blind a person from the truth, leading them to miss important ideas and experiences. After forming a wrong opinion about someone, they are being unfairly criticized. It is important to take time to get to know someone before judging them by how they appear to be. In the novels The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, characters were misjudged, leading the reader to learn not to judge a person by their appearance. In The Outsiders, Cherry is misjudged based on her class, and that resulted in a loss of relationships, teaching the reader that people’s lives are not always what they appear to be. Cherry and Ponyboy …show more content…

The Greasers, on the other hand, are thought of as poor people who are dirty, dysfunctional and wilder than the Socs. Cherry and Ponyboy avoided each other because of what they appeared to be, what they thought of each other, and the group they associated with. To the Greasers, Cherry’s life seems perfect because she has access to everything she wants, giving her all the happiness she needs. In the text, Ponyboy thinks, “I’d always thought she was stuck-up” (Hinton 21). However, when they meet at an outdoor movie night, they find that they aren’t so different after all. They talk about the people that have hurt them and how hard life is for both of their groups. …show more content…

Piggy’s real name isn’t Piggy, but he is called this because of his weight. The other boys on the island tease him about it, but he hates it. This leads to the other boys not treating him like they do each other, and whenever he says something, no one thinks anything of it. Piggy also struggles with asthma, and the boys are mean to him because of this too. His qualities that make him different lead to the boys picking on him and not caring about him. The boys don’t know that Piggy is full of good ideas that could help them out when trying to survive on the deserted island they have crashed onto, because they are mean to him. The author supports this idea when he says, “Ralph! We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us--” (Golding 16). Piggy’s idea to call the other boys with the conch is very important, and this conch becomes important to the story. However, his ideas get covered up when the boys bully him. For example, the text states, “You’re talking too much, said Jack Merridew. “Shut up, Fatty.” Laughter arose. “He’s not Fatty,” cried Ralph, “his real name’s Piggy!” (Golding 21). Piggy is insecure about this name, and the boys push him around, not caring about what he thinks. He has the idea to count the kids to know how many people are there, but he gets waved away

Show More
Related
927 Words | 4 Pages

Piggy one of the boys on the island is an overweight, bad

Read More
1534 Words | 7 Pages

For example, shortly after Pony meets and stands up for Cherry at the movie theater, they go to the concession stand for popcorn. In line, they talk about how Socs are different from other Socs and greasers are different from other greasers soon after Pony describes when Johnny was jumped by Socs. The Socs that jumped him were the boyfriends of Cherry and Marcia, but

Read More
861 Words | 4 Pages

One important thing Cherry says in the book is how things are bad all over from the socs to the greasers. Cherry mentions this to ponyboy to try to explain to him that it is tough living up to this stereotype and it is not just hard for the greasers it is the same for the socs. To add on when Cherry is talking to ponyboy about dally she says “I could fall in love with Dallas Winston,” she said. “I hope I never see him again or I will.” I find this very interesting because Even though she obeys the rules of being a Soc, she finds herself drawn to crude, violent guys like Dallas Winston.

Read More
972 Words | 4 Pages

In the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders, by author S.E Hinton, Cherry Valance seemed to go from a narrow minded Soc, to a open and accepting young woman that doesn’t identify to either side by the ending of the novel. This is shown from her first encounters with the greasers, to when she seemed to be genuine and help out the greasers to finally when she openly expressed kindness and love to the greasers. The novel illustrates early on that Cherry Valance was a young teenage girl that lacked sympathy for a select amount of greasers. On the other hand, She grew a friendship with a fellow greaser named Ponyboy towards the beginning of the novel.

Read More
824 Words | 4 Pages

The school boys main focus was to survive and get rescued. While Piggy and Ralph were looking for the other boys that also fell onto the island they saw a conch. Then Piggy had suggested to Ralph that he should blow into the conch to help them call for the other boys. They selected someone to

Read More
622 Words | 3 Pages

Piggy is very intelligent, he comes up with ideas on how to help the boys survive on the island from the moment they crashed on it. Ralph starts begins to admire him for this clear focus on their rescue off the island. “ we can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us” (Pg 16)

Read More
406 Words | 2 Pages

Piggy's overweight physique and glasses easily present him as an outcast to the other boys. His appearance made him an easy punchline for their cruel jokes. Piggy confides in Ralph hoping that the island will be a fresh start away from school bullies.

Read More
1773 Words | 8 Pages

S.E. Hinton’s young adult realistic fiction novel “The Outsiders” is a beautifully written story about Ponyboy Curtis, a 14-year old kid, with his group of friends, and his problems and struggles in the real world. For example, we get to know about the big conflict between the Socs and the Greasers who are two different social groups that live on the opposite sides of the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Throughout the book, there are a lot of stereotypes and reputations that overpower the characters in the book, as no group exactly understands each other before having stupid fights with one another. In fact, that was how the major problem of the story, Johnny accidentally killing Bob because he was choking Ponyboy, started since one of them wasn’t

Read More
1062 Words | 5 Pages

After a quick vote, Ralph was elected leader of the stranded boys, leaving Jack jealous and vengeful. Golding expresses in the novel how people can be made powerless and put in danger due to their self image. As a way to express this, Golding uses the character, Piggy, to give the audience a sense of what it feels like to have problems and conditions that create a separation between people. Piggy is a character with more of a sensible appeal to the problems that arise in this novel, but he is dramatically weakened after being caught time and time again envying Jack and Ralph. Piggy is described as a "fatly naked" (13) boy as he and Ralph are first scoping out and entering the pool, whereas when Piggy was exiting

Read More
1217 Words | 5 Pages

As stated before, Piggy is clearly the heaviest of the boys, and more than once, Jack called Piggy “Fatty”(21). In this way, Piggy almost immediately loses power and respect. You can see this when Ralph tells Jack Piggy’s name, but more so in Piggy’s reaction after the fact. Piggy ended up confronting Ralph about how he didn’t want to be called Piggy, but Ralph blatantly disobeyed and told everyone that Piggy is what he was called. In Ralph’s defense, he is “Better Piggy than Fatty” (25).

Read More
1359 Words | 6 Pages

Even before the boys can realize the severity of their situation, they immediately begin to make fun of poor Piggy and treat him almost as a scapegoat. While on the beach the boys find a conch, the conch will eventually represent order but is originally said to be a trumpet, “‘Where’s the man with the trumpet’ Ralph, sensing his sun-blindness, answered him. ‘There’s no man with a trumpet. Only me”(Golding 20). Ralph, one of the island’s newest residents, is the first to find out about Piggy’s nickname.

Read More
866 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the vast oceans of literature, one can find that the misjudgment of a character is quite common. Though misjudgment is plentiful and even expected in the art of writing, the aftermath of these fallacies are often devastating to the characters and thought-provoking to the reader. In the novels The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and Lord of the Flies by William Golding characters were subjected to immense amounts of misjudgment, resulting in disastrous consequences for both the character and the reader. An excellent first example of misjudgment having consequences is in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with Piggy showing that the misjudgement he experienced led to the decline of society on the island and the boys embracing savagery;

Read More
646 Words | 3 Pages

Thus, on page 90 paragraph 4, the reader learns that Ponyboy had to get a haircut and entirely change his appearance. This is insanely unfair because Greasers can’t receive praise while still looking like themselves because none believes a “Lowlife” Greaser could be a hero. Additionally, on page 40 paragraph 6, Cherry tells Pony “ if I see you in the hallway at school or someplace and I don’t say hi, well, it’s not personal or anything, but…” For Cherry is embarrassed and ashamed to be seen with someone because he looks like a greaser. Due to Greasers being treated horribly and expected to be bad people just because of how they

Read More
709 Words | 3 Pages

A theme that arises around Piggy is the realists in the world are unheard when other people are overwhelmed by an inner evil. In the beginning, Piggy tries to make his name known but Ralph does not care and he calls him the one name he does not want to be called, which is Piggy. Piggy is seen as weak by the other boys because he is fat and has asthma. An example of Piggy being an unheard realist is when he is trying to get the attention of the boys and it is very hard when he finally gets their attention he tells them they need to build shelters and get rescued and points out that no one paid any attention to the ‘littluns’. Throughout the book, Piggy is a reminder of being rescued.

Read More
663 Words | 3 Pages

In chapter 3, Cherry comments, "Ponyboy… I mean… if I see you in the hall at school or something and so hi, well it's not personal or anything, but…. We couldn't let our parents see us with you all. You're a nice boy and everything…" Even though Cherry attempts to be kind, she still wants to follow standard social class restrictions. A final example is Randy. Randy is a Soc that empathizes with the Greasers.

Read More

More about Misjudgement In 'The Outsiders'

Related Topics

Open Document