Staying Gold In The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton presents the topic of “staying gold” in the novel The Outsiders. The protagonist Ponyboy, is fourteen years old and lives with his two older brothers Darry and Sodapop. Darry is now their legal guardian, since their parents died in a horrific car crash. Darry, Soda, and Ponyboy are all part of a gang called The Greasers from the east-side of town. Greasers are seen as hoods and criminals who are poor and not smart in terms of education. Ponyboy’s best friend and fellow Greaser is Johnny Cade, who has had a very hard upbringing. Ponyboy is a Greaser that does not exactly fit the stereotype, yet he will do anything to stand up for and protect anyone in the Greaser gang. The Greasers have an enemy gang called The Socs who are rich

When Ponyboy and Johnny started to run away from home with each other they stopped at a park and sat down for a bit when a car of Socs had pulled him. One soc was trying to drown Ponyboy when Johnny stabbed him and saved Pony. After Ponyboy got up he thought, “ Bob, the handsome Soc, was lying there in the moonlight, doubled up and still. A dark pool was growing from him, spreading slowly over the blue-white cement. I looked at Johnny’s hand. He was clutching his switchblade, it was dark to the hilt. My stomach gave a violent jump and my blood turned icy” (Hinton 56). Ponyboy, at fourteen years old, was currently looking at a person’s dead body. Not to mention that the boy was only a couple of years older than Ponyboy. Even Though it was the only way to save Ponyboy, it was still a horrible act. Ponyboy nor anyone should ever witness this kind of gut-wrenching event. Parents would absolutely hate it if their children had to witness a dead body on the ground. If one thinks about the topic they will discover that most adults will never experience this. This whole event is a very mature topic that Ponyboy had to process quickly because he and Johnny realized they would have really horrible consequences. They ended up going to Dally for advice and having to run away by themselves to an abandoned

Ponyboy, Two-Bit, and Steve had gone out for lunch together to a little neighborhood grocery store. Before they went out for lunch Ponyboy was talking to his English teacher about how he had missed so many days that it would be impossible for him to pass the class unless Ponyboy did something. The English teacher told him that if he wrote a strong semester theme that he would raise Ponyboy’s grade to a C and then he would pass the class. Ponyboy is by himself thinking, “I was sitting on the fender of Steve’s car, smoking and drinking a Pepsi while he and Two-Bit were inside talking to some girls, when a car drove up and three Socs got out. I just sat there and looked at them and took another swallow of Pepsi. I wasn’t scared. It was the oddest feeling in the world. I didn’t feel anything-scared, mad, or any-thing. Just zero” (Hinton 170-171). In this quote Ponyboy thinks about how he felt when the Socs got out of their car and approached him. In the beginning of the book Ponyboy would be scared and nervous, like he felt when they tried to jump him on his way back from the movie theater when he was by himself. Ponyboy ends up realizing that he felt nothing at all, not scared or angry. He had realized that he felt nothing at all. Ponyboy has experienced the same kind of approach by the Socs once before. He was so scared then because he had seen what they had done to Johnny and