The Simple Question
"Mom, does patriotism really matter?" asked Johnny
"Sure it does Johnny", replied his mother.
"But why?" asked Johnny.
"I don't know, honey."
A simple question with more than one hundred answers, which most people have no idea of the
answers. Why does patriotism matter today? One question that changes how you see people forever.
One way you can see people is in the color of their skin, or how they think about things. For
example, if someone is African American, you should treat them the same as if they were your same race. Also, if someone else is gay, then you should treat them the same way as if they were straight. Same as if someone was Middle Eastern or Caucasian. Being a patriot can start with just recognizing others as equals.
The word "patriot" means someone who is loyal to their country. One of the best ways to be a
patriot is to join the army. One of the easiest ways to be a patriot is to simply, say the Pledge of Allegiance. Being patriotic, an adjective, means to have respect for the president and officials of the country. Another definition of patriotic is to have respect for laws. The easiest way to be patriotic is just following the laws.
Speaking of laws, there are a lot of patriotic laws to include. One law is social justice which means
having equality in society. Another law is freedom of religion. That means that you can practice any religion from worshiping God to worshiping a spoon. Religion and the color of your skin doesn’t change your health care either. We all have equal rights.
“Why does patriotism and equal rights matter today,” was the question asked. The easy answer is
"being a patriot matters because if you treat others equally, then you'll get a great reward, friends." So yes, patriotism does matter.
Pony Boy
Ponyboy Curtis is the character I have selected. Ponyboy has long, light brown hair and green
eyes. I have picked Ponyboy because he reminds me of myself. He is the youngest child of three people and is around my same age and personality. I like Ponyboy because, again he reminds me of myself. I also like that he's not like Dally in a way that he's completely hardened, or like Two-Bit, where he makes a joke about everything and just steals from stores instead of getting a job.
At the beginning of the novel, when Ponyboy gets saved from the socs by Dally, Darry, Two-Bit and
the rest, Ponyboy is revealed as scared, out of place, and lonely. For example, when the socs held the knife under Ponyboy's chin, he's obviously scared. He's out of place because he can't seem to take any of the Greasers with him to the movies because they don't understand how to sit still or are too serious so they don't understand movies. The book even says, "And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loned it." If that quote doesn't say lonely all over it I don't know what will. These examples show that Ponyboy is kind, caring and misunderstood by mostly everyone in the gang.
Ponyboy changes throughout the course of the novel because he becomes a hero. He becomes a
hero by going into the church to save the little kids. Ponyboy also got to the kids and improvised by throwing all of them out of the window. One man even says, "…I think that you were sent straight from heaven. Or are you just professional heroes or something?" This change is important to the character because it makes him realize that people that live in bad towns don't have to be bad themselves.
At the end of the novel, Ponyboy is kind of out of it. He doesn't believe that Johnny and Dallas are
dead and he is getting horrible grades in school. He could get a F at best in his English class, so his teacher told him to write an essay, that'll get him up to a C if he does well, which turns out to be the book, "The Outsiders". Also in court, Ponyboy says that he was the one that killed Bob and that Johnny was still alive. The book even says "I started running into things, like the door, and kept tripping over the coffee table and losing things." That is about as out of it as I have ever seen. I think the change is for the worse because then Ponyboy isn't going to go to college and he isn't going to do great in the outside world.
I predict that Ponyboy is actually going to go to college in the future because if his essay is as long
as the book, then I think he has pretty much pulled it together. Ponyboy will probably become the smartest and the best of all the Greasers.
