Essay on The Outsiders Text

Looking at life as an outsider and feeling as though one is being treated as an outsider is a matter of perspective or point of view. Adolescence is a time when teenagers may consider themselves to be adults, but in reality teens are still under the control of others. Parents, teachers, and other authority figures are always telling them how to live their lives. For example, ponyboy knows that he is not safe walking the streets in his own neighborhood. He could be attacked solely because of the way he is dressed he feels like an outsider in his own town.

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His feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability lead him to conclude that life is not fair. His parents are dead, darry is forced to work two jobs to support the brothers, soda has dropped out of school, and the greasers are looked upon as white trash. He explains that the gang warfare is actually warfare between the economic classes. Because he is from the poor, east side of town, his place in life is unfairly predetermined. Family relationships are strained during the teen years, but in the curtis family, the right to stay together as a family is a constant struggle. Since the death of their parents, darry has assumed the responsibility of guardianship for pony and soda, and under that pressure he has aged beyond his years. Ponyboy complains that darry is a stricter disciplinarian than his father, but by the end of the book he understands darry's role: darry is a good guardian he makes me study and knows where i am and who i'm with all the time.

He is self conscious about the fact that soda has dropped out of school, and he wants him to finish his education. Soda did not do well in school, did not like school, and is perfectly content to work in a gas station a job he loves. Soda also believes that he is doing the right thing by helping to support his family. Pony doesn't care about any of those facts he just wants soda to go back to school.

They have turned to the gang for the love and support that should have come from parents. Johnny is painfully aware of the difference between the gang and a family and through him pony begins to understand how lucky he is to have caring family members: i don't know what it was about johnny maybe that lost puppy look and those big scared eyes were what made everyone his big brother. I thought about it for a minute darry and sodapop were my brothers and i loved both of them.

The third major theme that runs through the outsiders is the use of colors in a black and white world. For example, someone or something is either right or wrong there can be no middle ground. Hinton descriptively uses color throughout the book to define and add depth to the characters in their environments. Early in the book, she associates warm colors with the socs and cool colors with the greasers. Warmth usually is equated with inside and cool is associated with outside, and the colors reflect the characters' positions in society: the greasers view the socs as insiders and themselves as outsiders. In her original descriptions of ponyboy's gang, she uses cool colors: ponyboy's eyes are greenish gray, darry's eyes are like two pieces of pale blue green ice, dally's eyes are blue, blazing ice, cold with a hatred, and two bit mathews has gray eyes.

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It is a crossover color that cannot be affiliated with anyone or anything, so it is interesting that dally, who was tougher than the rest of us tougher, colder, meaner, was the one with white/blond hair. White is also used many times throughout the novel to describe fright, white as a ghost. The color white symbolizes the internalization that there are no absolutes in the world. To realize that people and events may not be purely right or wrong, good or bad, can be frightening.

Just like the color white contains all the colors of the spectrum, dally's character covers a broad spectrum. In addition to his cold, mean image, he is johnny's hero, he is the one who literally gave pony the coat off his back, he helped to save the children from the fire, and he was a scared boy who reached out to the curtis brothers when he most needed help at the end of his life. Throughout the book, pony matures and grows in his ability to see the full spectrum, to stop dividing the world into black and white, good and bad, insiders and outsiders, greasers and socs. Pony's fascination with sunsets at the beginning of the book and, later, his appreciation of the countryside around the church hideout i loved to look at the colors of the fields and the soft shadings of the horizon symbolize this development of his character. Three is a cardinal number that is common in american literature and folklore, and to find it as a pivotal theme in this story is not surprising.

Americans have grown up with stories such as goldilocks and the three bears and the three little pigs. And the three rings on the fist of a soc change johnny's life forever, and ultimately lead to three deaths: bob's, johnny's, and dally's. Hinton biography 1. the outsiders takes place in tulsa, oklahoma, during the 1960s.