Cruel Fear Of The Socs In Hinton's The Outsiders

Jazlyn
Ponyboy's opinion highlights the cruel fear the Socs inflict upon the greasers, who are barely making ends meet to survive. As a result, it had set up a biased image of how Ponyboy saw the socs. In the novel The Outsiders, Greasers and the Socs have been through various struggles and rumbles that would always result in the socs being on top, never getting in trouble, while the greasers are on the bottom, always getting in and out of jail. This leads up to the bitter feelings of greasers towards the Socs. At the same time, some believe that Ponyboy never changes his attitude toward the Socs, his interactions with Cherry and Randy and the death of Bob show and help Ponyboy realize that the Socs are also human. The first example of Ponyboy realizing that Socs are human is with his acquaintance, Cherry Valance. “We have troubles you’ve never even heard of". (Hinton, 34) Cherry is trying to explain to Ponyboy that Socs have problems that are entirely different from what the Greasers have. “Things are rough all over” (Hinton, 35) Here, Cherry helps PonyBoy realize that they all, everyone, has problems. Similarly to Ponyboy and Cherry’s incident, another example of Ponyboy realizing that the Socs are human is his encounter with Randy.

“I’m sick of all this. Sick and tired. Bob was a good guy. He was the best buddy a guy ever had". (Hinton, 116) While talking to Randy in his car, Ponyboy realizes that Randy was a soc, and he also experienced the pain of loss, he knows what it feels like to lose somebody". He ain't a Soc, I said, “he’s just a guy. He just wanted to talk". (Hinton, 118)After that talk, Ponyboy realizes that Randy is a human and requires people to talk to. Although, some would disagree, and say that Ponyboy doesn’t realize that Socs are