Ponyboy Curtis: Ponyboy is the fourteen year old narrator and the protagonist of the story. Ponyboy is with a gang that calls themselves the Greasers. Since both of his parents died in a car crash he lives with his two older brothers Sodapop and Darry. Ponyboy is different then the rest of his gang, mostly because he has different interests than they do. Throughout the novel he must overcome many challenges to save his friends, family, and himself.
Doodle's big brother's fear of being made fun of led him to being ashamed of his little brother. This subsequently led to him to teach Doodle how to walk. He also did not want to have a brother that could not do anything. Doodle's brother only helped Doodle for his own reasons and for himself. Doodle's brother was cruel.
At a young age, Alex’s parents abandoned him and left him with his abusive uncle, which led Alex to isolate himself from the outside world, as he felt unwanted. Ultimately, Alex learns through his suffering to love others; which can be seen through Alex sacrificing himself to save Minnie’s daughter. Furthermore, in the poem Rain when you want sunshine a boy craves for happiness in his life and expresses his feelings through the weather. He is upset that the weather turned out to be rainy and compares this to his life so far (gloomy). His life until this point has been very much related to failures rather than success.
When Carl gives Jody the responsibility of owning a pony, Jody almost immediately expresses affection and emotion. This humiliated Carl, for he did not give Jody the pony for affection/emotional purpose. To Carl, the horse's purpose was to be trained and to teach Jody responsibility. "He needs a good currying (...) and if I ever hear of you not feeding him or leaving his stall dirty I'll send him off in a minute." said carl.
The gang is the only family he has. Terry is not confident, as his body language displays rounded shoulders and hands in pockets. When Joey is crucified he is upset and feels that the gang mislead him, “I thought they was just gunna rough him up a little but’ he said with his had over his heart, whilst showing signs of guilt. “He could sing but he couldn’t fly” a gang member said, they all laughed as if the tragedy meant nothing to them. When he meets Edie he is obviously attracted to her, the more time he spends with her you see his loving, protective side.
This affects him as he could not give priority to his responsibility as a soldier because he thinks that he loves her so much more than his war mates. Such ideas would keep Cross’s friends in danger as he would only care about his safety and not his war mates and the importance to win the war. Cross’ irresponsibility behavior has caused a very big effect as it killed his friend Ted Lavender. This could be seen in a verse in paragraph 10 in the short story. “He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because
For example, when Ponyboy is walking home from the movie theatre he is worried about getting jumped. “Greasers can’t walk alone too much or they’ll get jumped or someone will scream Greaser at them”. He thinks that all Socs are cruel, rich kids who like to pick on Greasers for fun. He thinks this partly from experience and partly because that’s what is expected of him. Ponyboys views begin to change when he meets Cherry Valance.
Even though he loves Edna and his sons, I don’t think he is considered as a good husband since he knows very few about Edna’s true feeling. I think this because he spends slight time with them, and leaves the family behind and goes out saying that he is always busy and has to go away for business or spends more time with his friends. As my point of view, I think it is not fair for a guy to treat a wife or his family like this and it seems like he is just a selfish person to me. Since marriage during that time of period was very harsh for women I think she was able to survive by meeting people. The time period where Edna was living was in a very strict condition for the women, especially for house wives.
Because of the needless gang fighting, three teenagers are killed in the novel, clearly pointing out the negative aspect of belonging to a gang. Hinton is obviously trying to warn the reader against participation in any gang. Minor Themes Related to the major theme of the book is the theme that a teenager can rise above his circumstances through hard work, patience, and determination. Pony is the proof of this theme. Even though he is born into poverty, loses his parents in a car accident at an early age, and participates in the Greasers, by the end of the book, he is determined to better his plight in life, largely due to the encouragement he receives from the deceased Johnny in a letter.
Herrick uses empathy to help us understand why old bill has no connection with society, old bill suffers trauma after the loss of his daughter and wife and now exiles himself from society not being able to bear the thought of carrying on life without them. Old bill finally develops a relationship becoming almost like a “fatherly figure “with billy “I like the kid...I like his company" juxtaposing the lack of love and relationship between Billy and his real father. Herrick uses flashback to emphasise that billy did not belong in his home, “he... slammed the door on my sporting childhood” this flashback is an example of irony, although we should belong with our family billy is rejected and pushed away from his father, this is Herrick’s concept that even though things can look normal on the surface deep down you can not belong, this is also