1st hour Body Paragraph
A person should get to know others instead of stereotyping them because it is better to understand an individual than to lump them into a group. Stereotyping is assuming that someone is the same as their group and judging another person based on their looks, their clothes, their background, or their financial situation. Stereotyping keeps one from getting to know others and creates many problems. Many such problems from stereotyping occur in The Outsiders. The two feuding groups each stereotype the other, which causes fights, jealousy, and hatred. The Socs, who are the rich kids, judge the Greasers as white trash and good for nothing hoodlums. The Greasers, on the other hand, judge the Socs as snooty, heartless jerks who only care about their social status. Ponyboy, as Greaser who does not fit his stereotype, falls into the trap of thinking that all Socs are the same. Because the Socs jumped Johnny and him, Johnny defended Ponyboy by killing the attacker, and Ponyboy now “hated them as bitterly and contemptuously as Dally Winston hated” (114-115). Ponyboy compares his hatred to Dally because he has made clear in the story that Dally despises the whole world. In this hatred, Ponyboy judges each individual Soc by the group, and thus stereotypes them. When Ponyboy gets to know some Socs as individuals, however, he sees that they are people too and should be considered such. For example, when Randy, the “super-Soc,” tells Ponyboy about his friendship with Bob and Bob’s problems, Ponyboy “remembered Cherry’s voice: Things are rough all over. I knew then what she meant” (117). The Soc, Cherry Valence, told Ponyboy this when she befriended him at the movies. She and Randy help Ponyboy understand that everyone has their own problems, and therefore Ponyboy should not stereotype the Socs’ lives as easy. Because each person’s life is different, Ponyboy learns that he should get to know people and try to understand them instead of labeling them by their group.
1 comment:
That is cool
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