“Greatness is birthed through hardship and testing. It arises choice by choice.” -John Paul Jackson. This quote means that success comes through hard work, trial, and many great and poor choices. Ponyboy encounters many hardships such as stereotyping and Johnny’s, Darry’s, and Ponyboy’s parent’s deaths. However, he makes the choice to still act happy and to not care what other people think. Everyone acquires hardships in life and it’s how you handle them that determines who you are as a person.
Johnny killed a drunk soc named Bob after him and a few friends jumped Ponyboy and Johnny. Johnny states in the novel, The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, “ ‘I killed him,’ he said slowly. ‘I killed that boy.’ (p. 56)”. He also stated, “ ‘... they were drowning
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some of the kids are missing’, and then it is stated “... faintly, you could hear someone yelling. And it sounded like it was coming from inside the church … I slammed a big rock through a window and pulled myself in … realized Johnny had been right behind me (91,92)”. Johnny ran into the burning church building to save the young kids that got trapped in there. However, the church, enriched in flames, swallowed him whole. So, Darry had to run in there to save him. The doctor said that Dally would be okay after two or three days in the hospital. But, Johnny was in critical condition and was suffering from severe shock and third-degree burns. He couldn’t even feel the burns below his waist (102). This is proof that Darry got sick and stayed in the hospital for a few days, but was fine eventually. Whereas Johnny, he became VERY sick and fainted after talking too much and ended up, in the quiet hospital, dead. Johnny made this choice because it seems to be a natural instinct to try to save people. Plus, he may have thought that it was his fault the church was on fire and felt bad. The impact on Ponyboy was that when Johnny died, he became a mess. He didn’t try on his homework and tried to tell himself things that weren’t