Do you remember when you had those lazy days, when you say you plan to do something but

you never
do it? The few days that you procrastinate for a while, or if you're a master procrastinator, you do
everything at the last minute for the rest of your life?
It’s not like Ponyboy, our main character and narrator, is a procrastinator; he’s a 14 year old high school
student with good grades, like his brother Darry did in his high school years. In The Outsiders book,
written by SE Hinton, the two struggle to get along, especially as they live together without their parents.
But despite this in his normal life as a low-class Greaser in their town, Ponyboy seems to come stale on
one thing in his story: changing his own views about the Socs. It’s become a “tradition” that the west-side
rich Socs beat up the poorer Greasers, and the Greasers beat up the Socs. But an encounter causes
Ponyboy’s friend, Johnny, to kill 18 year old Soc Bob Sheldon in self defense. The story tries to show the
struggle of Ponyboy in between the conflict with the Greasers and Socs, and mainly trying to change his
conflicting view about the rich kid group overall, as Ponyboy learns more about them through his story.
However, this is mostly in his head.
As we see Ponyboy's thoughts through his 1st person narration, his own one-sided perspective of the also-
struggling Socs doesn’t seem to change through the actions he’s consciously willing to take with the Socs,
and he’s only soft on a select few, plus Ponyboy even contradicts his claims that support the Socs right
after he makes them.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Initially, much of the first few chapters of the book talk about Ponyboy’s very verbal distaste for the Socs,
even as he describes his world for the first time. But for most of it, Pony just uses words, and throughout
the rest of the story there are no physical actions he makes in order to fix his view overall or the
struggling situation between the two rivals. However, words still go a long way in many situations.

For instance, “I’d help you if I could,” are Ponyboy’s words to Randy, a Soc who was friends with the
one Johnny killed, and someone thinking if he should fight for the values of others or if he should back
out because of his own values. The “if I could” statement is first stated on page 99 as Ponyboy talks to
Randy properly for the first time, and later on page 110 as Pony talks to Cherry Valance, the girlfriend of
the boy Johnny killed. “If he could,” means that something is stopping him from helping Randy in this
situation, and with Cherry later on. It seems that the only thing that was stopping Ponyboy from trying to
resolve the Soc/Greaser conflict was, in fact, the Greasers themselves. As early as page 24, Ponyboy says
that the main rule the gang has is to stick up for each other. That Greasers stick together, become a pack;
help each other when they need it the most. In the Greaser's decision to fight the Socs in the rumble,
Ponyboy does it without a second thought of backing out, because he wants to be there to stick up for his
friends and gang. However, Randy had previously stated that the rumble wouldn’t solve the problem with
the Greasers and Socs; it would leave the Greasers still poor and still beaten by the Socs and the Socs
themselves would continue to be off the hook with many things in their lives. Ponyboy is very aware of
this, verbally. Later it’s shown on page 145 that Socs still try to beat up Ponyboy because of Bob’s death,
which is the Soc Johnny killed.

“I was sitting on the fender of Steve's car, smoking and drinking a Pepsi while he and Two-Bit were
inside talking to some girls, when a car drove up and three Socs got out. [...] ‘You're the guy that killed
Bob Sheldon,’ one of them said. ‘And he was a friend of ours. We don't like nobody killing our friends,
especially greasers.’”

The Socs had lost the fight either way, and the rule was that they would have to leave the Greasers alone
as a consequence. Regardless, they still tried to intimidate Ponyboy and beat him up, just as Randy said.
His action of joining the fight didn’t fix the conflict between Greasers and Socs. They were still trying to
beat him up like last time. It didn’t give him a change of perspective either, as Ponyboy was willing to
fight them the same way if they didn’t back off.

“Big deal. I busted the end off my bottle and held on to the neck and tossed away my cigarette.
‘You get back into your car or you'll get split.’
They looked kind of surprised, and one of them backed up.
‘I mean it’ I hopped off the car. ‘I've had about all I can take from you guys.’”

Thus, Ponyboy made no action to stop the conflict, and made no action to change his opinion. His words
were only there to move the story along instead of helping him change his opinions or the events that
happened. Even as words go a long way, Ponyboy’s words were only there to keep the story moving.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Imagine if a ghost said, “I’d never step foot into your bedroom without permission.”
But what if the ghost was like the genie or Casper? They wouldn’t exactly have feet, and would be able to
enter your bedroom without contradicting their previous statement.
Ponyboy repeatedly does this when he is thinking about the Socs. As this story is put in his perspective,
and as we finally find out, is also written by him, it’s noticeable that he repeatedly contradicts his
statements.

As Ponyboy has his first interactions with Cherry Valance, he learns from her that the Socs still struggle
emotionally as well, and that it’s not just hard for the Greasers.
“Things are rough all over.”
Cherry’s statement regards both the Greasers and Socs, as her views about the Greasers were broken as
she met Ponyboy for the first time, as he was unlike her opinion that all greasers were like Dallas
Winston. While Ponyboy says that she won him over with her statements on page 33, he later contradicts
this, and says a statement that only focuses on the greaser's struggles. Five pages later, Ponyboy’s
complaint only focuses on how his greaser friends fight with cruel parents, maintaining jobs, and life
itself, while the Socs can have fun beating up others and going to parties. Pony previously regarded that
he was won over on the claims supporting the Socs, but it appears that he has not.

“‘It ain't fair!’ I cried passionately. ‘It ain't fair that we have all the rough breaks!’ [...] Things were rough
all over, all right. All over the East Side. It just didn't seem right to me.”

Later, the story depicts the Greasers preparing to go to the rumble, which is where Ponyboy makes a
second contradictory statement. Ponyboy says on page 114 that he doesn’t like to fight, regardless of
being willing to do so. He says “anyone,” which would also regard the Socs, so Pony’s statement would
mean that he doesn’t like to fight the Socs and others. He later states in 117 that he has no good reason to
fight either, other than for self defense. Yet on the same page he said he dislikes fighting, Ponyboy
believed that beating up Socs was incredibly important. He seems desperate to fight them, as he says that
he was in “mortal fear” with the possibility of not being able to go.

“I'll fight anyone anytime, but I don't like to.

‘I don't know if you ought to be in this rumble, Pony,’ Darry said slowly.
Oh, no, I thought in mortal fear, I've got to be in it. Right then the most important thing in my life was
helping us whip the Socs. Don't let him make me stay home now.”

However, he does not, and thus contradicts himself again. Ponyboy doesn’t make any loopholes, but
instead it’s just him contradicting himself in loops, repeatedly throughout the book. He says one thing,
and then cancels out the statement with something else. If one of Ponyboy’s contradicting statements was
a wish to the genie, then who knows what would have happened.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Furthermore, Ponyboy makes exceptions to his “all Socs suck” rule; people like Cherry and Randy for a
while. Exceptions, specifically exceptions to people and groups, is a difficult thing. To make an exception
to someone of a specific group and exclude the rest doesn’t exactly mean you support that group,
especially if you only know the group based on stereotypes and bias. That exception may just be different
from what you have heard overall. Ponyboy does this, just as he has contradicted himself.

As early as page 40, where Ponyboy meets Cherry for the first time, he lies to her for the sake of her
comfort. Pony told her that he couldn’t use a busted bottle as a weapon. His reasoning was because
Cherry is terrified of fights, and can’t stand them. When Pony’s friend Two-bit revealed his blade to the
Socs who came up to them, Pony said he’d “seen her eyes,” as well as said, “I had to tell her that,
because I'd seen her eyes when Two-Bit flicked out his switch.”
Pony felt like he had to tell Cherry that statement in order to comfort her regardless of his willingness to
fight with the broken bottle anyway. If it was another Soc that didn’t have a fear of fighting like Cherry,
it’s likely Pony wouldn’t have said that.
Another piece of evidence is on page 110, when Ponyboy insults Cherry for being distrustful to both the
Socs and Greasers for spying regarding the rumble. However he regrets his wording and stopped when
she was close to crying, yet didn’t apologize. His reasoning was that he “can’t stand to see girls cry.”
Another important but small instance is during the rumble on page 120, where Ponyboy tried to look for
Randy and hoped he wasn’t attending. It seemed that Ponyboy didn’t want Randy to be like the rest of the
Socs, as he said on the same page that a lot of them were just cold-blooded and mean. He expected Randy
to not be there so that he wouldn’t be like the Socs he deems as mean.

An interesting point is on page 73 of The Outsiders, where Pony makes this statement:
“So Cherry Valance, the cheerleader, Bob's girl, the Soc, was trying to help us. No, it wasn't Cherry the
Soc who was helping us, it was Cherry the dreamer who watched sunsets and couldn't stand fights. It was
hard to believe a Soc would help us, even a Soc that dug sunsets.”
Ponyboy distances the Soc factor of Cherry because he can’t imagine that a Soc has the capacity to be
helpful at all. So he distances that part of Cherry and only considers the sunset part, because it is
something that he knows and is comfortable with. It’s not that he’s soft when it comes to Cherry, it’s that
he cares about her to distance her from something that he considers as bad or a negative thing in his life.
Without a doubt, Ponyboy finds many ways to show the reader how he makes exceptions for people being
Socs instead of having an overall better view of the Soc group. With those exceptions like Cherry, he
becomes nice and comforts her, not because he regrets his mean words toward the Socs but because of
who Cherry is; a girl. Ponyboy can’t stand to see her cry and he doesn’t want her to be afraid of fights, so
he lies to comfort her. Aside from Cherry being different from Pony’s view of Socs, just because she is
the exception doesn’t mean that he accepts the rest of them.
===-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-==

As a summary, Ponyboy’s perception of the Socs and their group does not change, nor does he seem to
make an effort to change his views. Ponyboy mostly considered them all as one group, and made
exceptions like Cherry and Randy for a few moments until he ended up believing they were like the rest
of the cold-hearted Socs he’s used to (reference page 141 of the book). But regardless of his thinking this
way because of going through a trauma stage near the end of the book, it is his final opinion of the Socs.
Ponyboy may not be a procrastinator throughout the entirety of the story, but his views on the Socs and
his struggle to change them is something that he doesn’t even do at the last minute. He just skips it.