Authors Note: This piece should be graded as the final essay about the outsiders. My topic was on how one of the Soc members is a dynamic character.
“If you have faith in yourself, you will accept changes easily. You won’t be afraid of who you might become.”
“There are always choices. Sometimes, you think there is no other way, but there is. There are always at least two ways. But we are too concerned and scared of what is happening to us, so we can’t see anything.” In the novel "The outsiders" Randy is a Soc like all the others. Not only does his life as a Soc go through a major fall, he also realizes that even though "Greasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs" that there is something more to life than just being in the "In crowd."
Life has its ups and downs that we've all experienced, but has anything ever happened to you that influenced you for the rest of your life? Randy may not be a main, important character in this novel but I remember his scene the most. A soc is a person who is basically royalty in their town, they may mug the greasers and steal the other schools mascot, but they always end up back on top. No matter what the greasers do, they'll still be greasers. During one of the chapters, Pony Boy and Johnny save kids from a burning church; they'll be remembered for their heroic justice but will never be treated the right way.
People say, “Things happen for a reason,” for Randy, not everything goes the way he’s imagined. The soc’s know the greasers don’t affect them in any way, or do anything wrong, but they still mess with them, whenever they find a small group of greasers, Randy and the others soc’s attack. During one of their attacks, things get a little out of hand. Pony Boy nearly drowns from the leader Soc, who plunges his face in a water fountain, not letting him come up for air. The greaser’s best friend Johnny does the only thing to help his friend survive…by killing the Soc holding him down. When his friend, the leader Soc, Bob, was stabbed, Randy’s perspective on things changed instantly. He was no longer the second Soc in charge, who had nothing to fear because Bob was tough and nothing would stand in his way, he was now the lead Soc. In a way, I bet he felt that he was in charge of what could happened to the other Soc’s, but I bet he also feared that his own life could be in danger in another attack. Randy’s feelings and perspectives on thing’s change almost automatically which makes him a dynamic character.
A dynamic character is a person that changes throughout the story, which defines exactly what Randy is. Randy’s perspective on the Greasers changed multiple times during the book. First, he started out hating the greasers for their reputation, then after Bob’s tragic death, Randy was frightened by the greasers, and finally after the article of Pony Boy and Johnny saving kids from a burning church, he learned to respect them. During the scene where Pony Boy and Randy are talking in the car, you actually get to see who Randy really is. Randy isn’t who he is because he wants to be, he feels that if he was any other way his Father wouldn’t approve of him, and that’s all Randy cares about. Randy would rather run away and start a new life than be in the dangerously involved “Soc life.”
When I think about Randy’s changes throughout this book, I don’t believe he started out a bad person. Like my dad always says, “He is just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” Meaning, that Randy could be living his life his way, but being a Soc is the only choice he thought he had, he didn’t know any better. At the end of the book, Randy skips out on the Greasers vs. Soc’s Rumble, he makes a choice, a decision, that he isn’t going to put up with the fighting anymore, and by doing that he earns respect by readers, his dad, the greasers, ]and most importantly, he followed his own thoughts and decisions and did what he’s been wanting to do for his whole life of being a Soc.
