Something Gold Can Stay: The Power Of Literature

"When I stepped into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I only had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."

One of my clearest memories of the year I turned 12 was sitting in the corner of my sixth grade classroom on the day that my little sister was having surgery reading the Outsiders by S.E Hinton. I remember clutching that book like it was a safety blanket, a reality that I could get lost in that made me forget about the fear. In the coming weeks, I read the Outsiders over and over, but eventually I put it down.

Fast forward to a day a few weeks ago in 2018, approximately nine years after I first picked up the book, and on an impulse, I bought the audiobook of the Outsiders. Over the last few weeks I have listened to it, and this book has taught me some lessons that I would like to share with you as well as allowed me to travel back in time through my own life.

The Outsiders, published in 1967 by an 18 year old S. E. Hinton, tells the story of two gangs, divided by socioeconomic status, focusing on a member of the Greasers, the lower class gang, Ponyboy Curtis. The story is told in first person from the perspective of Ponyboy. By the way, I will try to keep this blog post spoiler-free, but if you're worried about spoilers, just go read the book. It's worth it. You can also watch the movie, but it's substantially worse than the book.

1. "Things are rough all over."

In the beginning of the book, Ponyboy and his friend Dally go to the movies, and they happen upon two girls from the other gang, the Socs, Cherry and Marcia. During this encounter, Ponyboy and Cherry have a conversation about the problems that they experience on their respective sides of town, and when Ponyboy tries to say that the problems of the Greasers are worse than those of the Socs, she counters with the phrase, "things are rough all over." It takes Ponyboy only a few weeks to learn this lesson, but it's taken me years.

So often, we think of our own problems as the worst things in the world, and we look at someone else's Facebook or Instagram feed and say, "hey, that's not fair. I'm struggling, and they're out there having brunch." Now I don't want to invalidate your pain (or my own pain) because whatever you are feeling is real and valid, but we need, especially in the age of social media, to remind ourselves that what you see on the screen is not the complete picture. Everyone has struggled in some way at some point. Every person, as Walt Whitman says in his poem, Song of Myself, "contains multitudes." Every picture, every post, every interaction is more complex than we usually realize (Come to think of it, this also applies to Talmudic texts, but blog post on that coming later). We need to remember this. The grass may seem to always be greener, but in reality, "things are rough all over."

2. "Nothing gold can stay."

Note: this is not an original quote from the Outsiders. It's from a poem by Robert Frost that you can find here.

This line is quoted a number of times throughout the novel. Ponyboy quotes the whole poem to Johnny at one point. Johnny says to Ponyboy that he thinks the poem is about childhood and the passing of time. Somehow, I both agree and disagree with this line. We can't stay in that golden age of innocence. We can't ignore reality forever. And that's okay. We need to make peace with the fact that everything will change over time, but that doesn't mean it won't stay "gold." There are beautiful things that can be found even in the roughest of times.

When I first opened this book, I was 11 years old, three years younger than Ponyboy. Now I am 21 years old, making me older than almost every character in the novel. My life has changed a lot since I first sat with this book. I went through high school, made it to college, acquired an iPhone, spent a full semester (almost) in Israel. Heck, Claire, my little sister, who was 8 at the time, is now going to be a senior in high school.  So I guess I disagree with the poem, as Johnny interpreted it. Sitting here in my apartment in Jerusalem, overlooking the Old City, my life feels pretty "golden," even though I no longer consider myself a child. The gold has stayed in some ways and hasn't in others.

Before I started listening to the audiobook, I hesitated, wondering what I would do if the book didn't hold up. I had been saying that the Outsiders was one of my favorite books for so many years, but what if I didn't like it anymore? But it held up. As I was listening to the words that I had read so long ago, they evoked exactly the same feelings as I felt back then. I still sobbed at the sad parts (if you have read the book, you should know exactly what I'm talking about), and I still laughed at the jokes. I now noticed more of the themes and subtleties throughout the book, but if anything, it made the reading/listening experience better--and I didn't flinch every time that a character swore. And I guess that's the power of literature. It allows you to travel through time in a way nothing else can. And it stays constant, a friend on your bookshelf, just waiting for you to take it on an adventure again. So maybe, at the end of the day, something gold CAN stay (if you want it to).