Nothing Gold Will Fade Away With Age Analysis

Innocence will fade with age

In the world we live in today, people go through heartbreaking and traumatic experiences, where they are pressured by the society surrounding them that will fade their innocence over time. A perfect epitome of innocence fading over time is in the novel ‘The Outsiders’, written by S.E Hinton, the story of a traumatic time in the life of a recently orphaned fourteen-year-old boy named Ponyboy Curtis. He lives on the East Side of Oklahoma, a member of the lower class and a gang of the “greasers”. Quiet and dreamy, Ponyboy has conflicts with his older brother and guardian, Darrel, who keeps the family together by working day and night for a living. The greasers are essentially the heroes of the tale. Set against them
The state of being “Golden” is the way children look and perceive the world before they find out about the real things and hardships in life. Johnny wanted Ponyboy to stay golden. He was implying that Ponyboy is good and innocent and should maintain thoes qualities throughout his entire life and future career. After Ponyboy had recited the poem for Johnny, it had opened his eyes and changed his perspective of how the world was seen as he said “You know, I never noticed colours and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It seems like they were never there before.” (Chapter 5, Page 95). A line that has a lot of meaning is “So dawn goes down to day”, this implies that there’s always a point in time when something ends, whether it’s a life, happiness or an end of a beautiful day. The line “nothing gold can stay” means that nothing beautiful can be the same forever. It’s almost like a person. A person can be cheerful and wonderful in every way, but they can’t be that way endlessly. This is because everyone and everything comes to an end. “Then leaf subsides to leaf” is basically the most meaningful line in the poem, it tells the audience how life moves on while having a very calming effect to
From analyzing the different characters in the book, you can tell that their innocence fades in due time due to their on-going feud and hate towards the opposite gang. Although it’s not too late for Ponyboy to change how he is and return to his “golden” state, he has done and seen too much to be innocent and act like nothing has happened. In the future, I strongly believe that Ponyboy will be successful and has a great life ahead of him; this is because towards the end of the novel he puts everything aside and begins to work harder in school to achieve higher grades and impress his older brother,