Outsiders Written Essay

Ponyboys and Darry’s relationship impacted a lot of people including Sodapop. We see this near the end of the novel where Ponyboy and Darry are fighting, and Sodapop bursts anger and storms outside  because of how much his brothers fought. This makes us understand how much Ponyboy and Darry’s relationship has influenced Sodapop where he is always caught in the middle of the fights and that he is the one that calms everything down like a peacekeeper. The author, S.E Hinton did this to show that there is always a sunshine after a dark storm, meaning Sodapop is the light of the storm and the storm is Ponyboy and Darry. They can be link to the film “The Power Of One” where P.K manages to get all the tribes together in the prison to sing as one community against the prison guards.

This relationship also influenced themselves negatively as well. We see this in the text when Ponyboy is slapped after he had came home late making Darry worry about him, and Ponyboy runs off in tears to the lot where he calmed down with Johnny. This makes us feel the intensity between their relationship and how it impacted the next series of events. The author did this to show people react when they are worried, scared to death or even anger as Darry was worried about Ponyboy and angry when Ponyboy got home late. This reminds me of an episode of the simpsons where Marge kicks Homer out of the house after The “Wife”  homer married in L.A shows up at their doorstep looking for Homer, and Marge fills up with anger and kicks Homer out.

This impacted Johnny negatively aswell where he gets into a critical state of paralysis. For instance when Johnny and Ponyboy goes into the burning church to save the little kids, and a piece of burning timber fall onto johnny knocking him unconscious and left paralysed neck down. This  makes us feel scared and frightened of the outcome of Johnny, and the intensity as he might be ok and he might not be. S.E Hinton did this to make us create drama and make us feel worried, and that any can be a hero, even gang members. This reminds me of a scene from the movie The Amazing Spider-Man where Gwen died after helping Spiderman defeating Electro, as Gwen and johnny had the same fate where they both died as heroes.

This relationship between these two also created something positive, as they were able to figure out and communicate possible ways to work there problems out. For instance we see this when Darry sees Ponyboy in the hospital. “Tears started dripping out of his eyes, he’s never cried even when Mom and Dad died” quoted in the book later on he says “I’ve been worried sick about you Pony”. This meant that Darry cared about him. We also see this when Darry and Ponyboy chased after Sodapop after he stormed out and agreed they would stop fighting. This make the readers  feel happy that all the family issue is sorted and there is hope for them in the future. The purpose of this was that in every family there is always fight, but that doesn’t mean you don't mean anything to them. This reminds me of my childhood where me and my dad always fought because he was always worried about what I did, since when I was young I was stubborn and didn’t realise that he cared because back then all I thought he was, was just annoying. But since I grew up i finally realised he was looking out for me.

This is why I think Darry’s and Ponyboy’s relationship was important because it create more or a storyline to follow and the reasoning. This showed a lot about being a family and a gang where it's no difference being in a family as to a gang. I think ‘The Outsiders’ book made by S.E Hinton is worth studying about, because it really teaches  a lot about being in a gang.