Examples Of Grief In The Outsiders

According to Daily Chart, “Over 5.8 million people die under the age of 18 every year in the whole world; 25% of those deaths are suicide, 30% are traffic accidents, 10% of them are violence, and 35% of them are other accidents” (Patton 1). The five stages of grief can be very hard to go through, that is why there are so many “under aged” deaths throughout the world. These relate to The Outsiders because greasers go through the stages of grief throughout the book. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The first stage of grief is denial. Denial is when someone disagrees with the fact that something has happened and they do not like it. According to the Grief Packet when one is in the denial stage, “You tell yourself that it isn't happening” (Ross 18). This means that someone can think something is not true in some way. Most people go through this stage often in their life because of their relatives dying or just losing something that they were friends with. The outsiders can relate to the denial stage because Ponyboy, Dally and Johnny go through it a lot. In The Outsiders Ponyboy Says, “This can't be happening. This can't be happening. This can't be…” (Hinton 49). In this scene of the book the socs drove up to Ponyboy and Johnny then they ended up trying to drown

Depression is almost the same thing a acceptance but, it is when someone is sad about what happened and isn’t in denial about the past. According to the Grief Packet, “It comes during the anger stage, and the bargaining stage, and in the letting go stage” (Ross 23). This is not one of the major stages because it goes on in three of the other stages. According to The Outsiders, “Don't cry, Pony, we'll be okay. Don't cry” (Hinton 64). In this scene Johnny was in the hospital and Ponyboy was crying. Johnny was telling him to stop crying. This stage is one where someone can backtrack to another stage like anger or