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The Outsiders Hero's Journey Essay

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The Outsiders Essay: The Hero’s Journey
“Fear has two meanings-forget everything and run or face everything and rise. The choice is yours”(Quotations and Quotes). Johnny Cade chose to forget everything and run, but soon realized running didn’t help him forget the past. In The Outsiders, Johnny goes through the heroic journey by the fact that he faces a harsh reality that brings him to committing an act he never thought he would, which in the end led him to becoming a hero. His story starts with tragedy and ends with it as well. The tragedy he faced, gave him strength.
Reality is a cruel mistress. People are seen as a certain way and categorized by their daily lives. Some never bother to look underneath the many layers that people consist …show more content…

In anger and in fear he stopped Bob from hurting Pony(56), that left him with a feeling that distressed him greatly. He says to Pony, “Shut up about last night! I killed a kid last night…. How’d you like to live with that”(74)? This eats away at Johnny and makes him cry- “it took alot to make Johnny cry”(4). When Pony and Johnny go on the run because Johnny killed Bob, they leave everything behind and only stay in touch with Johnny’s hero, Dally. It hurt Johnny even more when Dallas had told him his parents had not asked about him after he ran away(88). He decided to turn himself in and stop running when he saw that it did more harm than good. Johnnycake knew that it wasn’t fair for Pony to be away from his family. On their way back to the church they see that it had caught on fire. Pony and Johnny knew that they had probably started the fire and ran in the church to try and save the children stuck inside. They rushed to get the kids out of the church window as embers fell on them. Though they go through these hard times they end up being heroes when they save the children and learn quite a few things.
The ones that have left this life behind can sometimes teach things that can only be fully grasped when they are no longer in people’s lives. Johnny leaves a gift in the form of a letter addressed to Pony that teaches him that the suffering will end. His death and his gift both purify him in his journey, making him a hero. He stayed in the hospital in critical

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