It's Just Not Right

Author’s Note: If haven’t heard the term don’t judge a book by its cover, then this piece of writing will help you understand it a little more.

Stereotypes can make a lot of people mad. Most of the time they hurt people because they don’t know how or what a person really would do. Say there was a house burning down with children inside. What would you do?  Would you just sit and watch or would you be the hero and save them? If you think about it, it would be a hard choice to make. How would you feel if you didn’t go into the burning building, or did go indie to save them? To understand more how the Greasers felt back in the day because everyone judged them by their covers. The Outsiders shows plenty of the themes of stereotypes.

First off the Greasers have always had the problem of being misjudged by society. The Greasers just looked like criminals. When Dally came into the gang he didn’t just bring another member for the gang. He also brought his criminal record. He was one of the bad Greasers. When he was younger he ran into some trouble with the cops.  There is Dally the bad Greasers then there is Ponyboy and Johnny the more nice Greasers and so since Ponyboy and Johnny where younger than Dally everyone thought that they would follow him and do what he does and look up to him. But of course they didn’t.

The way people misjudged them was by saying they don’t belong in our group and/or here because of how they looked. That’s really how the Greasers had it because they had long greasy hair, leather jackets, and didn’t go to school. So everyone thought they were criminals and they were always misjudged. When Ponyboy and Johnny saved the kids from the burning building they changed the way Greasers were looked at a little but not a lot. Would you be able to do that if you were a Soc I bet not because the Socs were snotty nose rich kids that people thought were perfect little angles. But when Randy told Ponyboy that he would let the kid’s just burn to death that dropped a huge bomb on the people reading and the people watching the movie.

The most recent and most common is the judging things before getting to know them or it. The Greasers to me is that they got screwed because they were born into the poor side and had no choice of their lives. The way they live is different then what people think a Greaser really should be. There are of course some Greasers that go to what society thinks they should be. Such as Dally is one of those bad Greasers. There a only a few Greasers that are basically good. First there is Johnny and Ponyboy, even Ponyboy’s brother Darry is good because he actually could have been a Soc. Sodapop is one of the more good Greaser basically the entire Curtis family could have been a Soc but then their parents die and their entire lives turn around and they go to the bad side of town.

The group that is most definitely misjudged is the Socs. People think of them as being perfect angles and never breaking the law or doing anything bad or even bad thoughts. We misjudge everything just about every day when you are trying to pick out a book you look at the cover and say this book looks terrible without reading the back and so you midjudge books. If you were one of the Greasers how you handle the burning fire with children inside? How would you handle the way society would treat you? It’s just not right to judge a book by its cover. That’s how the theme of stereotypes has to do with the Outsiders.