Family is Very Important No Matter Which Way it comes

Author’s Note: In the book The Outsiders there are three main themes the one that I am focusing in on is definition of family.  Which means your family does not have to be blood related.  Your family members just have to love and care for you.  Just like the Greasers to in this book.

"We're all we've got left. We ought to be able to stick together against everything. If we don't have each other, we don't have anything." Sodapop Family is the one thing you need in life and family does not have to be blood related family.  In the book, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, one of the major themes is “Definition of Family.”This means that family does not have to be related by blood.

First, Johnny has a real family but he does not consider them family. Johnny is one of the few characters that has a real family.  But Johnny's dad beats him and his mom and dad could care less about him.  They don’t care how late he comes home or even if he dead.  Johnny does not consider his blood mother and father family.  The greasers are Johnny's real family because they care for him and love him unlike is "parents". 

Just like Johnny the Curtis brothers have their family situation.  The Curtis brothers are Darry the oldest Sodapop the middle child and Ponyboy who is the youngest of the three brothers.  These three brothers are all they have left that is related by blood.  Their mother and father were killed in a car accident.  Darry has to work two jobs to keep the three brothers together.  Darry, Sodapop, and Ponyboy also consider the greasers their family.  They count on the greasers to look over Ponyboy while the two older brothers are at work.  The greasers help out the other members of the gang. 

Although both Johnny and the Curtis brothers have their situations with their family they are not the only ones; there are a lot of stories and movies that include family struggles into their plot.  For example the movie Snow White, Snow White runs away from her family because of the evil queen and ends up staying with the seven dwarfs.  While she is staying with them she bonds with them so much and she then considers the seven dwarfs her family. She found family through love and care rather than blood and bones.

This proves that families do not have to be related by blood. A fact that not everyone realizes, but yet they know is true. Blood is just until birth; after that, love finds, joins, and builds a family. This is exactly what happened in The Outsiders. But what exactly happened? Love, that’s all. Sacrifice, pain and hate all came in because of love. Blood never helped, it only hurt, this completely proves that it is not a blood relation that makes a family, but a connection through love and the heart.

Loss of Innocence

This is a responds The Outsides theme loss of innocence I am mainly directing this towards Darry. 

Everyone is born with innocence, but not everyone keeps this innocence while they grow up.  In the book The Outsiders almost all of the characters innocence as been lost except for Ponyboy and Johnny.

Darry one of the main characters, in the book The Outsiders he would have still had his innocence but when his parents died in a car crash.  Darry was forced to give his innocence up to protect his two brothers Ponyboy and Sodapop.  This was a big a responsibility but Darry was fine with giving up his innocence to be able to be with the rest of his family that he has left.  Also to protect his family and care for them Darry had to work two jobs.  In doing all of this to make sure is family would still be together  it was not for sure, if the government thought that Darry was a bad guardian then the government would take his two brothers away from him.  The Curtis brothers (Darry, Sodapop, Ponyboy) would have been the only members of the gang that still had their innocence.  I believe that your innocence is a very important part of your personality.  If your innocence is gone then people will suspect of you doing something wrong instead of a person that still has their innocence.  In the book The Outsiders this is one of the main ideas or theme of the book.       

Letter to Darry

Author's note: This peice is a letter to Darry form Ponyboy telling him why hne ran away and what happened.

Dear Darry,

Darry I want you to know something and it is very important.  The reason I ran away was not all because of you.  Well it started that way but it did not end up with me running away because you hitting me.  The other reason I ran away was because Johnny and I got in to a lot of trouble with the Socs at the park.  Long story short Johnny ended up killing Bob because he was drowning me in the water fountain.  After this happened we thought we got to get out of here fast.  So before we fled the area we went by Dally’s to get some money and a plan.  He gave Johnny and I some money, he gave me a jacket so I wouldn’t get as cold at night.  And then he told Johnny to stay at an abandon church.  If you were wondering how we got to the church well we got on a train by jumping on and off the train.  After we got off the train we found the church and in the morning Johnny went out to get food.  We then stayed in the house for the next few days and nights until Dally got here.  To pass the time at the church alone Johnny bought a book called Gone With the Wind   that I would read to Johnny very day.  Finally when Dally got here he told us that he had someone special to meet us.  But it came to be that Johnny and I already knew her it was Cherry.  We argued about why Dally brought her at lunch.  Then Johnny couldn’t stand not seeing the gang for this long period of time.   So Johnny deiced that he would turn himself in.  Dally was not very happy to hear that, while we were on our way back home there was no talking until we saw that the church was on fire.  Johnny and I got out of the car and ran towards the church.  All I was thinking was that the fire was because off me dropping a cigarette and it caught fire.  Then I heard that there were some kids in the burning church so I ran in.  When I about to go in I heard a man say no I will do it this is too dangerous for you.  But I did not listen I went in through the window and Johnny came in after me.  We got all the kids out and I Johnny told me to get out so I did and then the church fell right on Johnny.  Dally went into get him and that is all I remember.  When I woke up I was in the hospital and shortly after I woke up you and Sodapop were there.

Love,

Ponyboy