Negative Effects Of Labels In The Outsiders

The Outsider Essay Breakdown

Introduction: Labels impact every character in The Outsiders in several negative ways. These labels affect them causing others to refer to them as those labels even themselves. The people these labels affect are Dally, Johnny, and Ponyboy and these labels can be seen negative or positive about these characters depending on how they look at the labels.

Body Paragraph 1: The one most affected by these negative labels is Dally because the words they used to describe him is hood, crook, greaser, hopeless, criminal, and heartless. These are incredibly destructive labels because he got so used to them that he does not love anyone back and I think it is because of his label Heartless. Dally even said “He could never love Cherry Valance back” He barely even loved anything I mean besides the gang and he really did not care when Johnny said he killed Bob Dally just said “Good for you.” He is also addicted to hate because he used to everyone hating him or just saying other things about him. I think he needs a quote like this one “Dear haters I couldn’t help but notice that AwesoMe ends with Me and Ugly starts with U.” That quote explains Dally in my opinion.
Well he does show it but keeps it to himself and doesn’t share these feelings with anyone but Sodapop. Ponyboy even told Sodapop “Darry doesn't love me” Sodapop said “yes he does but he is just not really good at showing it” and it was true Darry did not show how much he loved Ponyboy till when Johnny died. That is when Johnny told Ponyboy “stay golden Ponyboy, stay golden” and Ponyboy could not figure out what that meant till Johnny was gone. Once they lost Johnny they all fell apart especially Dally, “he was the glue at held us together” Dally