S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Why We Don't Stay Gold - Page 3

I have no doubt how Ponyboy would have responded – something like, “Man, you just don’t get it.” I tend to agree. Maybe he would be more tolerant of some new work by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, which appears to recognise what really goes on.

Griffith has coined the term "resignation" to describe the point in our lives when we had to commit ourselves to living superficially because trying to think deeply about the real issues – namely why we are all so selfish, competitive and non-ideal – simply became too depressing. Griffith describes the agony of resignation in this way: “Adolescents didn’t resign easily because it meant separating themselves from all the wonder, beauty and excitement of existence that our species’ instinctive self or soul has access to. In fact, denial and the resulting alienation from our true self was a form of death – in resigning you were adopting such a false, dishonest state that you were, in effect, becoming ‘dead’ inside.”

Which may not sound like traditional science at all; but Griffith presents it as part of what he describes as a "first principle biological defence of the human condition." If he is right, being able to understand why we were all messed up would make all the difference. Until now we have only had writers like Susan Eloise Hinton to rely on. And poets too – take Robert Frost, he knew about what was going down:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Article Author: Damon Isherwood

Damon is an architect by training, but is particularly interested in literature. He also immerses himself in science that raises the thorny question of why we are the way we are.

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