What Is A Real Family?

Authors Note:  What’s it like not having a family? No parents to guide you and help you threw life? In the book “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton, the theme is Family.

       Family is one of the best things a person can have in life. Our parents help you to grow up into mature adults. Your may say you hate your siblings but everyone knows you love them. Family is super important to me and lots of other people around the world. “The Outsiders” explains lots of themes such as; Defying Stereotypes, Loss of Innocence, and the true definition of a Family.

In "The Outsiders", the greasers consider all of each other family. Some of them aren’t blood related. This makes no difference. Family can be anyone that you love. This can be friends or neighbors. Knowing I have an example. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania for 2 years. Not that long, I know. The neighborhood I lived in was barely new. Not many houses were built. Across the street my, best friend, Reina Elias lived. I considered her family my family. I am really close to her sisters and her parents are amazing! Over the summer, I went back to visit them. While my brother Zachary went to Boy Scout Camp. Reina and I talk about everything from boys to school. I consider her a sister and no doubt, were not even blood related!

  Greasers are their own family. But, I don’t think the Socs are. 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. They’ve had the rough path to start with. Ponyboy, Darry, and Soda pop, they had a great family at the beginning of their lives, and they knew it too. They loved their parents, and their parents respected everyone, but both parents unfortunately died, and they didn’t have them anymore. 

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 Ponyboy 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. Instantly that shows Darry caring about Ponyboy. To me, reading that shows a great example of family. What I mean by that is. If Darry didn’t consider Ponyboy as family he probably wouldn’t be as worried as he was. He was shaking Ponyboy to make sure he answers. If he shook Ponyboy and there was no reply. That pretty much would not be good.

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 doesn’t have to be blood related people; it can also be friends and neighbors of yours; Perfect example about me and Reina. Family is an important theme to think about when you read "The Outsiders."