Families In The Outsiders

Sometimes, just because you may be related to a person, it doesn't make them family. This was a theme that was beaten into to us throughout the story of the Outsiders. So many characters dealt with fathers beating them, mothers turning a blind eye, whether it was from sheer will or from drug abuse. The “Greasers” and the “Socs” both had to deal with parents abandoning them, being neglected, and not having parents there when their own children needed them most. It seemed like if you had a kid in this story that was even a little essential to the plot, you were the epitome of bad parenting.

One major problem I had with this book was just how useless the adults were in this story. Most of the parents were horrible ones, that beat their kids
Because the “Greasers” and the “Socs” are byproducts of the environment they were born in and live in, they stick to together and treat each other like brothers, even though they aren't and most likely will never be related. “Or I could've gotten one of the gang to come along, one of the four boys Darry and Sosa and I have grown up with and consider family. We're almost as close as brothers; when you grow up in a tight-knit neighborhood like ours you get to know each other real well.” (3, Hinton) In almost every major event in the story, one of the boys is there for either Ponyboy or Johnny. When Johnny died, each and every single one of the group mourned his death. It hit some especially hard, like Ponyboy and Dally, where Ponyboy pretends that he was the one that killed Bobby, just so he doesn't have to face the fact that Johnny died. Dally just completely broke, to the point where he wanted to die, because Johnny was the last thing that Dally loved in this world. The same goes for the “Socs”. While we don't really know the “Socs” side of the story, the author still gives us some information about what happened to the “Socs” when Bobby was murdered. Randy, One of Bobby’s best friends, wanted to stop fighting completely after his best friend was killed. Because of Bobby’s death, Randy finally realized that no matter what the “Greasers” do, whether they win or not, they will always be at the bottom, and the “Socs” will always be the ones with the lucky breaks. In the Outsiders, the “Greasers and the “Socs” show that in a world that spits out people who are the aftermath of the corrupt environment, in a world that family can mean nothing, people that share the same ideals, the same past, same future, will stay together, blood related or not. “Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes together.” -William Turner, The Rescuing of Romish