The Outsiders Conflicts

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is a fictional young adult book with many conflicts covering themes such as: don’t judge a book by its cover, leave the past behind, you never know what someone’s going through, and more. It stars a group/gang called the Greasers, the main character and narrator being Ponyboy. This gang is a group of teenage boys/young adults who are on the poor side of this area. The members of the Greasers are Ponyboy, Johnny, Sodapop, Dally, Darry, Two-Bit, and Steve. There’re also the Socs which are the “rich and spoiled” kids in the book. This book talks about what gangs have to go through and the choices they’re forced to make. I chose the theme “The past is a place to learn from, not live in'' and I have three conflicts to show that correlate with it. This theme means to learn from the past but let it go, and to live in the present. These conflicts include Ponyboy and Johnny

After Johnny died, Ponyboy denied it all, becoming delusional to the fact he was dead and blaming himself for the killing of Bob. Dally then couldn’t take the death of Johnny and basically killed himself by luring the police in to come and shoot him. This connects to the theme because Ponyboy is focusing on Johnny and on the past instead of paying attention to the present and believing that Johnny is dead. Both my quotes are of Ponyboy denying Johnny’s death. “Johnny was dead. But he wasn’t… He isn’t dead, I said to myself. He isn’t dead.” (Page 150) This is him denying the fact that Johnny died. The next quote is about the same thing. “”Johnny is not dead.” My voice was shaking. “Johnny is not dead.”” As you can see, Ponyoby continuously tells himself that Johnny is not dead, denying it instead of letting it go and moving on. This is a very big example of focusing on the past instead of the