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The Theme Of Identity In The Outsiders

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“Stay golden Ponyboy, Stay golden.” Sighs Johnny using his final dying breath. Perhaps he is telling his closest friend never to change, to stay the same. The novel The Outsiders Is about two high school social classes; Socs and greasers. The novel was written by S.E Hinton in attempt to fulfill her wish of providing more interesting literature for young adults. Throughout the story Ponyboy has been having an “identity crisis”. Because of his crisis, the book teaches a lot about it. With this given, the main lesson learned in the story is that identity evolves. Setting, Characters, and Plot play a major part in supporting this theme. The theme of identity can be clearly seen through the characters actions. The characters actions and words support identity becuase what they do changes how they are viewed by other people in society. The first quote in the book that supported Identity was, “I only mean that most greasers do things like that, just like we wear our hair long and dress in blue jeans and T-shirts, or leave …show more content…

The first quote supporting this is “"The fuzz won't be lookin' for you around here," Dally said, lighting up.” (69) This quote supports the theme because it shows that the police are always looking in a more poor community and wouldn’t expect murderers to be hiding in a church. The second quote was “Things were rough all over, all right. All over the East Side.”(38) This quote supports the theme because Ponyboy was explaining that because of where he lived, he had a harder life and was forced into being a greaser. The final quote to suppoet identity is “‘I am not. Take me to town and you'll find out pretty quick.’”(82) In this scene he was referencing how if he was brought into town that one would quickly find out that he is a greaser based on how he is treated. This is very supportive of the theme because it show that just because of where they live they are treated

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