What Is A Real Family?
Authors Note: This essay is about a theme in The Outsiders and this essay explains what it means and how it relates to The Outsiders.
Family is one of the best things a person can have, family is super important to me and lots of other people around the world… The Outsiders is a book that explains lots of themes such as; Defying Stereotypes, Loss of Innocence, and the true definition of a Family.
No doubt, that family is the people that are blood related to you; but family can also be friends and neighbors. The definition of family in the Webster’s dictionary states: family is a group that consists of a father, a mother, and children. But I looked a little further into the definition in the dictionary and it said, “A group of individuals living under one roof.” This is very true, but sometimes they don’t live with each other. For example: my best friend, Emma lives in Iowa and I live in Wisconsin, she is like my sister, and my other half. My whole family considers her part of ours, and her family considers me to be their family. And we are not blood related at all! That's what I would consider a family to be.
In The Outsiders, the Greaser’s family would be all of the Greasers. And I guess the Socs. Are sort of like a family too, but they are not as close to each other, and most Socs probably have blood-related family and are living with their real parents. The Greasers are a family because they care about each other, stand up for each other, and love each other for who they are… Most Greasers don’t or didn’t have a great family at the beginning. Except for Ponyboy, Darry, and Soda pop, they had a great family right in front of them at the beginning of their lives, and they knew it too. They loved their parents, and their parents respected everyone, but both parents died, and unfortunately they didn’t have them anymore.
When you first start the book, it gets kind of confusing, but once you actually think about it, you get it and start to really relate and understand it. It’s confusing to think that they are a family at the beginning of the book because most of them show “tough love.” But once you read till about the 3rd or 4th chapter, you would understand how their family works.
A great example of how they show that the Greaser’s are a family is in chapter one, right after Ponyboy got beat up by the Socs. And Darry had carried Pony boy and said, “Are you all right Ponyboy?” And he started shaking Ponyboy just to make sure and Ponyboy says “I’m okay. Quit shaking me, Darry, I’m okay.” And then Darry stopped shaking him instantly and said, “I’m sorry.” To me this little conversation in the book shows brotherly love between the two. Also, about 3 or 4 pages later in the book all of the older guys of the Greasers try to find the Socs who beat up Ponyboy and that shows that they all care about him and they want to protect him.
Obviously, from reading the entire book you could tell that these guys are definitely a family from what they’ve said, and how they have acted upon these situations that have occurred. Like I said before, family is not just the people who are blood related to you, they can be, but most importantly, your family is the people who love you, and actually care about you for who you are.
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