Carrie

 Go For it, Carrie!

English 9 January 4th 2014 The Character of Ponyboy Curtis in “The Outsiders” The main character in the novel “The Outsiders,” by S.E. Hinton, is a fourteen year old boy named Ponyboy Curtis. Ponyboy is what most would call a “hoodlum” or a “troublemaker” but despite all that, he calls himself a greaser. Ponyboy is dedicated to the greasers but he finds out that “nothing gold can stay”. When his friend and fellow hoodlum, Johnny Cade, murders in self-defense one of their rival socs, everything changes. Ponyboy is determined to prove to people, greasers, socs, and outside people, that fighting will not change anything. Socs will still be rich and greasers will still be poor. Ponyboy is insightful, and brave.  Pony boy is a very insightful boy. The war between the socs and the greasers has been happening since what seems like forever. Ponyboy is insightful to show others how fighting wont prove anything. “’And tonight… people get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I’m sick of it because it doesn’t do any good.’ You can’t win, you know that, don’t you? And then I remained silent as he went on: You can’t wing, even if you whip us. You’ll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we’ll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks.” (P. 116-117) With PonyBoy understanding and processing this he is insightful to show people that fighting won’t solve anything and that he probably isn’t the only one who feels this way. Ponyboy understands that works and makes sense, but at the same time he doesn’t change what he is doing. It may not make much sense to people reading the story, but it is actually very realistic.  Through the whole story Ponyboy was brave. He was brave when Johnny murdered Bob to protect him. He led the way to where they knew that Dally was and that was brave because he faced the situation. Ponyboy is also brave because when he jumped into the fire to save the little kids even though he knew that he might get hurt. This shows a lot about him as a person because I don’t think most people would do that. The people outside who cared about the kids didn’t jump in and the greasers did when they didn’t even know them.  Those traits really do describe Ponyboy. He will take matters into his own hands and really does care a lot. Ponyboy has great character traits and adds a lot to this story.