Shelby Foster
English 137H
Dr. Heather Bryant
16 October 2012
What’s Good is Gold: A Life Struggle for Perfection
“Nothing gold can stay” is an idea that people struggle with throughout their
entire lives. People build friendships and relationships that bring them happiness, only to
lose the connection with their friend or lover over time. A job that starts great will
eventually become monotonous and no longer enjoyable. People spend tremendous
amounts of money on new cars only for them to become outdated when a new model is
released the next year. It seems as though so many things in life are initially wonderful,
but eventually lose their appeal. People devote tremendous amount of effort to prevent
this degeneration of the things that make them happy. These efforts, however, are usually
futile and ineffective. In “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, Robert Frost displays this life
struggle poetically. He symbolically relates nature to the common battle to keep things in
life perfect. His analogy is so transposable that it inspired other authors to use his themes
in their work. “The Outsiders,” by S.E. Hinton, shows the struggle of a less than fortunate
teenager, Ponyboy Curtis, to remain pure in a world that daily pushes him towards
corruption. Robert Frost’s poem is quoted throughout the story and becomes a major
theme as Ponyboy gets into serious trouble and tries to maintain his character.
“Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold”. Robert Frost begins his
poem with a powerful statement about the initial golden beginnings of things. Qualities
that make something gold are subjective depending on the holder of the object, but all
golden perfection has the common theme of being difficult to sustain. Ponyboy Curtis,
the main character of “The Outsiders” was born into a world where the odds of staying
gold were entirely against him. His parents died in a car accident when he was only a
teenager and he and his two brothers were left to fend for themselves. They are poor and
automatically filed into “the Greasers,” a group of less fortunate teens who are typically
bad kids. Society is far from gold; people are judged in every part of the world based on
income rather than character. Ponyboy Curtis attains better qualities than the typical
Greaser, but he is not widely recognized for these qualities because most people
stereotype him as a degenerate youth who does little for himself. Unlike most Greasers,
Ponyboy is passionate about his education and making his future prosperous. Many of his
peers are more concerned with stealing property and maintaining a tough reputation. His
youth causes him to be quite impressionable and he attempts daily to make the best
decisions but is not always able to do so. Ponyboy does his best to remain true to himself
and retain what makes him gold, but this is an impossible task for him as it is for nearly
all people. The gold goodness that Ponyboy and all people begin life with is impossible to
keep. People cannot make the right decision all of the time and some of their good
character is lost. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” begins by symbolically stating this fact.
Nature blossoms as green and beautiful, but loses this beauty each year with the passing
seasons. Just like nature, people are unable to attain their virtuous and gold attributes.
“Her early leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour.” In this line, Robert Frost is
suggesting that the golden gleam of something fades rather quickly. In the case of a child,
it does not take a very long time for them to make mistakes and lose the innocence that
they are born with. The phenomena of “terrible twos” in children can be seen as an
example of children losing their initial innocence. When a child is very young, parents
think that their child is perfect and capable of no wrong. Once they reach the age of
around two, however, they have matured enough to be able to begin to misbehave
tremendously compared to their previous behavior. Babies do not know enough to be able
to do things wrong, so they appear to be perfectly good and pure. Once they reach a
certain age and maturity angelic behavior disappears. Parents may get frustrated with
their child who is no longer a perfect golden angel. It takes only a year or two for a child
to begin losing their gold-like quality, an example of how gold is quickly fleeting. In
“The Outsiders,” Ponyboy and a friend are involved in a murderous crime when they are
only teenagers in which they must defend themselves from unprovoked attackers. In the
minds of most people, a murder would erase any form of purity a person may have left in
their character. Even though Ponyboy and his friend were merely defending themselves,
they still killed a man. At such a young age, Ponyboy seems to have all of his gold
aspects taken away from him. The perfect attribute that initially comes with so many
things in life seems to often fade very quickly. When this shine wears off, many people
then become increasingly upset and do not know how to cope with it.
“Then leaf subsides to leaf, so Eden sank to grief.” Frost claims that when the
leaves begin to change and nature loses its gold beauteous green, Eden became upset and
was not able to manage with her anguish. In the case of the end of a valued relationship,
people often experience difficulty coping with their loss. The loss may come about by
means of a death or simply by people no longer following the same path in life. These
losses are often out of a person’s control, especially in the situation of death. People are
sometimes unable to move forward when they cannot understand why they have lost their
valued connection to a loved one. They spend a significant amount of time grieving when
their golden relationship ends. In “The Outsiders”, Ponyboy and his friend run away to
hide rather than face the crime that they have committed. Even though they know that
they acted out of defense, they think it is easier for them to run away than to face the
situation and potential punishment honestly. People often act senselessly during a time of
crisis because they so desperately want to regain the gold that they have lost. However,
accepting that things cannot remain perfect forever and moving on is a part of life.
“So dawn goes to day, nothing gold can stay.” With these lines, Frost is
discussing how people must face their losses and move on with life. Everyone
experiences tough times, but if people did not move forward after times of hardship, the
world would stand still. When a relationship ends, a person must eventually move on and
try to build new relationships that will bring them happiness again. Even though a child
grows up and loses their innocence, they will establish other good traits that make them a
unique person who may not be entirely pure, but can still have good character. Ponyboy
and his friend eventually realize that they must go home and face the consequences of
their actions. Even though running from their problems seemed to be the easiest solution,
they soon found that they missed their families and friends and wanted to continue on
with their lives. Ponyboy went on to take the lessons he had learned and grew to be a
better and more mature person. He went against some of his morals along the way, but
ultimately established new ethics that resulted in character development. People must
learn from mistakes and loss of perfection in order to grow and continue the cycle of life.
Even though it is true that “nothing gold can stay,” this does not mean that people
should give up on happiness. Things may not stay perfect forever, but this is just a fact of
life that everyone has to accept. Gold aspects of life bring joy and happiness when they
are perfect and new, but also bring sorrow when they lose their shine. Throughout life,
old golds are replaced with new ones and people find new ways to be happy. Ponyboy
may have had to go through some traumatic experiences to learn some of the most
important pieces of knowledge, but he came out a better person in the end. Robert Frost
accurately described the processes of discovering happiness, and the losses that occur
throughout life, but also taught his readers to continue on despite their sadness. Even
though life’s initial innocence fades, people will always find ways to still be good and
gold.