Identify And Explain The Conflict Between The Socs And Greasers

Just like how the idiomatic expression “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” is perceived, ‘moral values’, to a different person, has a distinct meaning. Moral values, more often than not, are defined according to the cultural beliefs. Each culture has its own sets of rules and beliefs to determine what is crucial, trivial, right, wrong, good and bad. For instance, it is vital for Chinese children to practice filial piety as it is an essential value of Chinese traditional culture (POŠKAITĖ, 2014); hence, living with parents, regardless of the marital status, is the right thing to do for it is good. On the contrary, Western children are not entitled to such obligation. They have but the “duties of gratitude” which guarantee parents no right at all to claim anything from them including welfare in the parents’ old age (Yuan, 2011). Apart from that, moral values play a significant role as “individual orientation” (Birnbacher,

Hinton, there are several moral values prevailed. This novel never fails to highlight extreme opposite situations of two contrasting social classes and, it is the emphasis of social class issues that inspires us to learn accepting and understanding the differences of people surrounding us. All the discrimination and loathing are utterly gratuitous; they are two of the peace’s greatest foes. Just take the conflict between the Socs and Greasers as an example; because of the contempt they hold towards each other, three deaths are ensued. From the very beginning of the novel, they have demonstrated their respective dissatisfactions by labelling the “West-side rich kids” as “Socs”, the abbreviation for “Socials”, and “jet set”, whereas all boys on the East Side, "greaser" because most of them in the neighbourhood rarely bother to get a haircut. Socs can never cease bullying the greasers and greasers are always carrying a weapon close to them, be it a blade or a broken pop bottle, to fight the enemies