Symbolism In S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders

There are over ten billion people on earth and every single one of those people are different in their own ways. Their religion,family and even personality. But is there one thing that can bring them all together, to just stop and stare? In The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, she proves that there is something that can do that, the sunset. In The Outsiders there are these two gangs the Socs and Greasers. The Socs are a group of rich kids that like to get drunk and mess with the poor Greasers. The Socs cause a huge conflict in the book because of one night, and they cause this bad thing to happen because they think they are better the the Greasers. Hinton uses symbolism, the sunset to represent that we are all human no matter where we come from, or where we are going.

They believe that there has to be a place with just ordinary people, no Greasers or Socs just regular people. Even though it seems like the Socs and Greasers seem to have nothing in common there is one thing that they do, the sunset. Ponyboy in chapter three says “Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We both saw the same sunset.” In this quote it proves that the sunset seems to be the thing that shows Ponyboy that the Greasers and Socs aren’t so different after all.
Another big thing in the book that helps Ponyboy and Johnny find their peace is when Ponyboy says this poem by Robert Frost “Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” This is a big scene in the book because before all this it made it seem like Greasers we almost nonhuman the way they are portrayed in the book. With Ponyboy saying that line it proves that he