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The Summary

  The gang was walking the two Soc girls home, and Ponyboy was chatting up a storm with the Soc girl Cherry Valance. He told her all about himself. Randy and Bob, the girls boyfriends, come and pick the girls up (Cherry agreed only because she didn’t want a fight to break out). Johnny and Ponyboy, left alone, accidently fell asleep in the lot until 2:00 in the morning. When Ponyboy returned home his older brother and gaurdian Darry hit him. He ran out of the house, picked up Johnny, and they ran away.

  The pair were resting in the park when Randy and Bob, along with some of their friends, pull up and pound Johnny-Cakes and Pony. The goons try to drown Pony, and Johnny stabs Bob in an effort to save Ponyboy, killing him. They hunt down Darry who gives ‘em 50 bucks, a gun, and Ponyboy a warm shirt. They sneaked into a boxcar and hid in an old abandoned church That Darry had told them about. The boys quickly fell asleep.

  I bet you didn’t see that coming.

The Critism

  These are by far some of the most shocking chapters in this book- and there are quite a few parts that will make you think “What a twist!” My only complaint would be the pacing. The story seems to move too fast in these chapters and I couldn’t really keep up. The chapters are long as well, so you have to digest all this new information in one sitting. The characters almost never, if ever, speak out of character. Hinton did a good job on keeping the character backgrounds and personalities in check. As usual she paints an effective picture in your head and uses a colourful vocabulary. It’s hard to not like this book.

I can’t wait until my class gets to watch the movie.

  Yeah, lame title. sue me.

   The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, is… pretty good actually. When I brought the book home to read the first two chapters  I.. I couldn’t put the book down (as lame as that sounds) and ended up reading it to the end. When my father saw The Outsiders sitting on the dining room table he was impressed that I would read a book like that; My dad read it as a kid. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s a novel assignment.

  Basically the book is about the struggles between two different classes (for lack of a better word) in society, basically the rich and the poor, from the poor perspective, because frankly it makes for a better story.

  My favourite character in the book would be Johnny Cade. The book describes him as a “little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers.” He was the second youngest, smaller than the others with a slight build, large black eyes, a tanned face, greasy jet black hair combed to the side and had a nervous disposition. He’s been badly trounced by the Socs ,and the stuff that happens to him in the rest of the book is downright shocking, and over half the major events in the book involve him in some way or another.. His parents beat him and abuse him daily; the only people that cared for him was the gang. I’m a sucker for the underdog, and he certainly fits the bill.

    In this leg of the novel S.E.  Hinton takes her dear sweet time introducing the characters and telling you all about them. The Socs are introduced when Ponyboy (the story is told from his point of view) are jumped by a small gang of them. In chapter two the gang goes to the Drive-In movies and to their suprise meet up with a pair of Socs girls. They talk about how rough they have it, and Ponyboy mentions how Johnny got mauled by the Socs. Johnny wished he had troubles like theres.

  This week in Social Studies My class got to talk with the children from LA we’ll be interacting with all year. It was a new experience for me, and my first impression wasn’t neccesarily a good one. On the first class I essentially spent fourty-five minutes wrestling with the server. The second class, however, was much more productive and we made up for the time we had lost from the first get together. I was the scribe while Tiffany was away.

  We had agreed that power was the contol someone, or something, had over another. Power could be measured in a relationship in many ways, such as supply vs. demand. If you can control someones demands, you’ll no doubt have power over them. However, power is often money.

  Power in a relationship can be a fickle thing. Everyone wants to be a somebody, to have power. Some relationships are torn apart by this struggle for power. As I’ve said before: Power corrupts and will change people. The worst possible outcome of corruption? Opression.

    Some people will choose whatever will directly benefit them instead of what will be best in the long run. Power is a precious thing, and it’s a thing people want to protect. Because of this the obvious things are occasionally ignored while they are busy looking into the smaller details.

 Power is important to people because it’s often directly tied to wealth. With wealth you can let you acquire your more shallow desires. The more weath you have, in turn, will directly affect your power. If you have enough power it’s not unusual to get special treatment which can allow you to bend all sorts of things, such as the law. *cough* ParisHilton *cough*

  The Bet vs. The Veldt

  On the surface, The Bet and The Veldt seem very different, with almost nothing in common besides them both taking place in a house. In order to see the similarities you have to look deeper into the story- into the lessons they teach and concepts they revolve around.

The Differences

  The differences of the story are easier to pick apart. For one, The Bet takes place in the past- some 150 years ago- and The Veldt takes place in the present or near future. The Bet takes place over the course of 15 (or more) years. The Veldt’s story spans about a week.  As far as I know, The Bet didn’t have any inspiration. The Veldt borrowed heavily from the world of Peter Pan, which had came out about 15 years before it. The characters are very different as well. The most obvious difference between them is that no character in Anton Checkhov’s story have names while The Veldt actually has names in the more literal sense. The Veldt is about a struggle for power while The Bet is more about self-control.

Similarities

  The similarities between the stories are more subtle. Both shine some light on the more pitiful aspect of mankind, Which is the desire for material things. Both involve Need vs  Desire, and Power vs. Relations. Seeing things from the perspective of a neutral party changes things quite a bit, or at least for me.

  Both of the stories are relatively short, clocking in at about seven or so pages and make you realise how foolish people act, even if not as extreme as locking yourself up for 15 years. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of messages in the stories about not spoiling your children or something, but I’m not too good at reading inbetween the lines.

  The Veldt and  the Bet.

The Veldt 

While The Bet was more about power and relationships, The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury is more about desire and need. The children honestly believe they need the house and the services it provides- Shoe tieing,  meal cooking, transportation, and so on,- while the parents want to shut off the house and return the old way of life, fulfilling their needs themselves.

  Read the story carefully. The story is a terrible, twisted version of Peter Pan. The kids Peter and Wendy want to never grow up and use the nursery to fulfill their deluded fantasies. The nursery becomes their Neverland, and in Neverland there are no adults. When the parents try to take away their Neverland, the kids take drastic measures to preserve it. Gruesome measures, at that.

  The kids have all they could ever want, and this seems to twist their minds until they snap. They’ll do anything to protect their desires. They have no need for their parents anymore; The house is their parent. The adults are on the other end of the spectrum. Because of the house, the parents can’t properly raise their children. They have nothing to do and in a vain attempt to restore order decide to shut down the house, so they can raise their kids. Being raised by the house, chances are the kids couldn’t develop a proper emotional health.

  Let me begin by saying that money is the absolute root of all evil. I’m absolutely certain that without money the world would be a much better place. Money brings with it greed and pride, poverty and superiority. Pride can be a very, very bad thing. Many proud people won’t stand for things they don’t agree with. If someone disagrees, you do not have to retaliate. Be the bigger man and back down. For most of the proud, they don’t consider this an option. When you think about it, the family’s problems started with money (They bought the Happy Home thing to show off their wealth) .

  Money also brings with it the ability to fill one’s desires. When your desires are filled, you develop a sort of reliance on them. The kids, for example, desired the nursery. When they got the nursery an addiction to it was formed. The parents tried to take away the nursery, and were killed. They were killed so the kids could keep their desire, and the sanctity it brought with it.

  Like The Bet, The Veldt also has a web of relationships between three main seperate parties: the parents, the children, and the house. The house had power over the kids. The parents had power over the house. Even though they didn’t know it, the children had power over the parents. The parents had a positive relationship with the kids, but it was one-sided. Peter and Wendy had a positive relationship with the house and the house only.

Frankly, this entire story gives me the creeps. Probably because when the kids killed their parents, they just didn’t care.