English Projects

Nothing Gold Can Stay Analysis

*THE OUTSIDERS SPOILERS*
-This is a over a year old and is horribly written but it is good for future reference I guess.

Robert Frosts poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" fits well with the Outsiders book. The lines in the poem all mean something that relates to the book.
"Natures first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold" means that when you are a child everything is good, gold, and it can be hard to keep it that way. Before Ponyboy and Johnny had killed Bob Ponyboy was still childlike, but after he let that all go. By the end Ponyboy was brave enough to threaten the Soc's, while at the beginning he was scared by them.
"Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour" I see this as meaning, like childhood, nothing good can last long. Ponyboys childhood was cut short, when he was fourteen. It ended after the incident with Bob, when Ponyboy started to act more like Dally.
"Then leaf subsides to leaf, so Eden sank to grief" To me this means no matter what you do bad stuff will happen. This makes me think of Dally. No matter what Dally did Johnny would die. It didn't matter if Johnny would have been cold like Dally, he was going to die anyways. The second part, "so Eden sank to grief" also makes me think of Dally because when Johnny died, he turned to grief and ended up getting himself killed.
"So dawn goes down to day" you keep getting older, and time goes on. This makes me think of when Darry tells Ponyboy that he can't just sit around forever because Johnny is dead, he'd have to eventually move on like the rest of them are doing.
"Nothing gold can stay" Nothing good can stay that way forever and childhood won't last long. Nothing that you see as good, or gold, will stay that way forever. That feeling or attitude will eventually go away. Ponyboy won't be like he was before Johnny killed Bob, he will always be more serious. He is no longer afraid to threaten Soc's or use a weapon against them.
S.E. Hinton used the poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, in a very good way to describe the Outsiders book. The meanings of each line in the poem fits very well with the meaning of the book. Something being gold can be seen as something being new, or good, either one of those synonyms for "gold" fits very well with the book.