Luke McKenna May Book Evidence TITLE: The Outsiders AUTHOR: S. E. Hinton Main Idea: The main idea of the book The Outsiders is that growing up is really hard and that it’s important to try to stay innocent and good when you get older. Quotation: “Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower, But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay.” - Poem by Robert Frost Analysis: The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is the favorite poem of the main character Ponyboy Curtis. Ponyboy and his friends are teenagers in a group called The Greasers. They are from the poorer side of town and are rivals of another group of kids called The Socs who are from the rich side of town. In the book, the two groups get into lots of fights and Ponyboy’s best friend Johnny kills one of the Socs who was trying to drown Ponyboy during a fight. They end up having to run away and have to grow up really fast. Ponyboy loves the poem because he thinks that Robert Frost is talking about growing up and that childhood is “gold’, like the roots of a flower plant. But childhood can’t last forever, just like green leaves eventually turn brown and flowers die. He explains this to Johnny and when Johnny is dying from burns from when they saved some little kids from a fire, Johnny says “Stay gold Ponyboy”. He is telling Ponyboy to stay innocent and loyal and not to grow up too fast or become a bad person.
