Stereotypes In John Hinton's The Outsiders

Ponyboy is part of the Greasers gang. Many people make stereotypes about him and his friends as a group, just because there friend killed someone out of self defense. People say they are aggressive and pick fights for the sake of it. They say gang members have guns, and kill people. Well, Johnny did kill that guy, but he was in fear of himself and Pony’s life, he usually doesn't hurt a fly. These stereotypes that people generalize on the Greaser members usually things you apply to a group when one person does something. Oxford dictionary says stereotype is “a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not true in reality.” For example a common stereotype is that all Asians are bad drivers, this is farther from the truth, but it is a

The people say he is not educated because he is a Greaser but he receives all A’s on his report card eh says “I'm not like them, Nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do” (Hinton 2). This quote proves that he reads and is into literature. In the end of the book Ponyboys says “I used to make A’s in English…” (169) which also proves he really does care about English class. So the stereotypes that Ponyboy receives are not always true in fact most are wrong.

Another stereotype Ponyboy reserves is that he gets in fights and is aggressive, but actually Ponyboy does not want to fight and hates hurting people. Maybe after the Socs, a competing gang, ruin his friend's life and it ends up killing him, Ponyboy does get aggressive but only because of those reasons. In the book he says “[I] Pick[ed] up the glass” “I didn’t want anyone to get a flat” These to quote tells us that he is not overly aggressive in fact is considerate of others. Ponyboy does go through loss and grief, he does get aggressive, but no more than you would if you were in his