Themes In The Outsiders And Nothing Gold Can Stay

We’ve recently been analyzing the themes of a novel and a poem in our language arts class. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost are two very interesting pieces of literature. The Outsiders is a novel that talks about the divided community of a city, the “Socs” and the “Greasers”, and describes their rivalry and the problems caused by it. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a poem that uses themes in nature to explain that good things don’t always last forever. Chapter three of the novel and the whole of the poem share that very theme- Good things don’t last, so cherish them while you can. The Outsiders shows us that great moments don’t hang around in chapter three. Hinton makes this theme clear when a situation that is peaceful and relaxing becomes dark. On page 47 it says, “Johnny and I stretched out on our backs and looked at the stars. I was freezing- it was a cold night and all I had on was a sweatshirt, but I could watch stars in sub-zero weather.” At this moment, everything is peaceful and it seems that all of Johnny and Ponyboy’s problems have melted away. Everything goes haywire, though, when Ponyboy goes home and his oldest brother, Darry, gets angry at him for staying out too late. Page 50 says, “Darry wheeled around and
It begins with a bit of a hopeful and peaceful tone. The first lie states, “ Nature’s first green is gold”. This relates to a person’s childhood potentially being the best time of their life. The poem gets somber a little while later when talking about how quickly childhood can fade away. Lines five through eight of the poem say, “Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay.” The idea that many people take away from this is that as you grow older, life becomes more and more difficult, so your childhood should be cherished. This is surely a motto to live