Theme Of Loyalty In The Outsiders

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Loyalty in The Outsiders One of the main themes in S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders is loyalty. Loyalty is showing faithfulness to a group of people, oneself, or a set of rules. Loyalty is a main theme in the book because it helps the reader understand why the actions of the characters in the book are important and contribute to the understanding of the main plot of the story. Three major characters in the story and their actions to themselves and others can be analyzed to understand the theme of loyalty. The character that we will look at are Ponyboy Curtis, Dally Winston, and Cherry Valance. All of the ways each one of characters show loyalty to their friends, family, and the rules they usually follow throughout the story help the reader to understand the characters much better.…show more content…
Cherry is one of the Socs that Ponyboy meets at the movies with Johnny and quickly becomes friends with, even though their social groups are divided. She shows loyalty to the rules of their lifestyle when she is talking to Ponyboy before running off with her boyfriend and says "If I see you in the hall at school or someplace and don't say hi, well, it's not personal or anything, but..." (Hinton, 36) This proves that Cherry is loyal to sticking with the norm instead of going against it. She's being faithful to her friends, the Socs, and parents. That changed closer to the end of the story when Dally meets up with Ponyboy and Johnny after they run away and informs them that Cherry is working as a spy for the greasers. Even though she's not showing loyalty to her friends or her rules, she's showing it to herself. When she was talking to Pony, Johnny, and Two-Bit at the movies, she told them that she hated fighting, so she was trying to find a way to make sure that her friends and the greasers wouldn't fight in an unfair way or anything so bad that more people that were close to each of the groups would get
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