Outsiders Final Essay

The Outsiders Final Essay
Author's note: This essay is about the theme dynamic or static characters. This theme is common in the book "The Outsiders" and I am demonstrating it.

What’s the difference between a static character, and a dynamic character? Ponyboy Curtis is one of the main characters in the book “The Outsiders”. By author S.E Hinton, and he is either a dynamic character which is a person who changes a lot throughout the story, or he is a static character who just pretty much stays the same and has the same opinions as before. His brother’s are Darry and Sodapop Curtis. During the whole story, it is just a letter narrated by Ponyboy that is telling the story. Ponyboy is a dynamic character for several different reasons.

Although the people around him are static characters, Ponyboy is different than most of the Greasers changing his opinion. We first see him change in Chapter two when he meets Cherry Valance. He changes because Greasers usually seem tough and mean, and known for that, but when he talks to Cherry he is nice and sweet, not like most of his friends. For example in chapter two when he is talking to Cherry he said “we still hang around rodeos a lot. I’ve seen you two barrel race. You’re good.” That shows that he has a sensitive, nice side of him and even from the start you could tell he liked Cherry, because of the way he acted. Ponyboy also changes when he wants to be in the rumble because he doesn’t really like to fight. That really surprised me because he doesn’t seem like the kid that would want to fight or hurt anybody. He was arguing with his older, protective brother Darry to get him to let him go to the rumble, and participate in this event.


Even if Darry won’t let Ponyboy go to the rumble, this is the connection I made. Sometimes mine and my friend’s parents don’t let us do things we want to because it might be dangerous or I don’t even know because I don’t understand parents. But this part of the book reminds me of family, because I can relate to how Ponyboy feels when he can’t do something fun that he was looking forward to.


Throughout this whole book, Ponyboy changed, because in the beginning, he thought Darry hated him, but by the end, he realized that all Darry was trying to do is look after him as a good father figure. Another way he changed is that he eventually noticed that after talking to Randy, he realized that there wasn’t that much of a difference between Greasers, and Socs. They are all just people he thought. Over all he just matured. He just basically grows up and made realizations that being the youngest off all Greasers, it is good because not even the older Greasers would understand, by going through a really hard two weeks or so, with everything piling on since one of his good friend Johnny’s death occurred.