The Outsiders shows that teens join social groups to help create their identities. In joining these cliques, the adolescents take on both the positive and negative characteristics of them. Looking at life as an outsider and feeling as though one is being treated as an outsider is a matter of perspective or point of view.
Adolescence is a time when teenagers may consider themselves to be adults, but in reality teens are still under the control of others. Parents, teachers, and other authority figures are always telling them how to live their lives. This loss of control inevitably leads to the feeling that life isn't fair. For example, Ponyboy knows that he is not safe walking the streets in his own neighborhood. He could be attacked solely …show more content…
He is self-conscious about the fact that Soda has dropped out of school, and he wants him to finish his education. Soda did not do well in school, did not like school, and is perfectly content to work in a gas station . Soda also believes that he is doing the right thing by helping to support his family. Pony doesn't care about any of those facts; he just wants Soda to go back to school. Ponyboy's gang members need the support and security that they find in the gang. The home life situations that these boys find themselves in are often abusive. They have turned to the gang for the love and support that should have come from parents.~Johnny is painfully aware of the difference between the gang and a family and through him Pony begins to understand how lucky he is to have caring family members: "I don't know what it was about Johnny — maybe that lost-puppy look and those big scared eyes were what made everyone his big brother. . . . I thought about it for a minute — Darry and Sodapop were my brothers and I loved both of them . . . they were my real brothers, not just sort of adopted ones." Pony's eventual ability to appreciate his family shows his growth.
Throughout the book, Pony matures and grows in his ability to see the full spectrum, to stop dividing the world into black and white, good and bad, insiders and outsiders, greasers and Socs. Pony's fascination with sunsets at the beginning of the book and, later, his appreciation