Outsiders are the ones who do not belong to certain groups. They have a propensity for being isolated by the society they live in. Outsiders in literature, however, are likely to affect their communities. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior redefines what it means to be an Indian by transferring to a mostly white high school; being a gypsy and a foster child, Heathcliff, as illustrated in Wuthering Heights, eventually becomes a possessor of a considerable fortune; the evangelists in Things Fall Apart gain converts when they challenge the Ibo religion by displaying the absurdity of prophecies they make. According to the examples above, outsiders usually have significant impacts on the community because they challenge …show more content…
Due to the conflict between his untouched nature and the social norms prevalent in the new society, he starts to challenge them when he experiences the suppression and exclusion. Therefore, his revenge could not have taken place if he were not considered an outsider. And as a result of his revenge, Heathcliff is able to cause drastic changes in the society he enters as an outsider. When Hindley becomes owner of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is suddenly degraded as a servant because Hindley still considers him the despicable creature. As Heathcliff is informed of his degradation, he says to Nelly: “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do,” (Chapter 7). The compulsion to revenge and challenge the social standards is deeply rooted in his mind due to the humiliation he experiences. Heathcliff’s coming back to Wuthering Heights as a wealthy gentleman challenges the standards that were once set for him. With power and money, he destroys Hindley and ultimately becomes the possessor of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. This clearly shows that Heathcliff’s essence drives him to challenge the social standards and radically affects the society he lives
The Outsiders S.E. Hinton is about two gangs, the Socs and Greasers, who do not get along and are fighting each other as well as society. Both of the gangs are judged by their appearance, social status, and where they are from. One character that stands out in the story is Ponyboy because he is dynamic with many sides to his personality, and he is the protagonist of the story. Ponyboy can be described as sensitive, smart, and brave.
Over a long period of time, an individual’s social status has always had a great impact on relationships between others. Relationships such as friendship, romance and even family relationships are greatly influenced by one’s social status. When people value social status to the utmost importance, it often acts as a barrier to further solidify relations with others. “Wuthering Heights” is a classic novel written by Emily Bronte which illustrates how social status gets in the way of relationships. This story (set in eighteen hundreds) displays the true nature of the people at that time because they excessive had pride. Since they had excessive pride, they often judged people based on their social class; hence changing their relationship between each other. In this novel social class was measured by observing an individual’s wealth, appearance and manners. Heathcliff happens to be the male lead character of this story that lacks social class due to his rebellious relationship with Hindley. Afterwards, Hindley degrades Heathcliff’s status this affects his connections with Catherine and Nelly. Since Heathcliff’s status diminishes, Catherine becomes reluctant to continue her affair with Heathcliff. Nelly also becomes wary of Heathcliff because his personality changes after restoring his own status. Thus, it is clearly seen that social class has an impact on the story by altering Heathcliff’s relationship between Hindley, Catherine and Nelly.
Although, Mr. Earnshaw tried to make Heathcliff an equal part of the family, Heathcliff never truly fits in. Heathcliff is from a completely different social class than the rest of his “family”. This led to the hatred that Hindley felt towards Heathcliff. Hindley robs Heathcliff of his education, forces him to work as a servant at Wuthering Heights and frequently beats him. Throughout this all, Heathcliff never complains.
The Outsiders identified the 60’s, often there would be violence between groups and often involving a group’s social class. For instance, the tensions between the Socs and Greasers is violent, and this will lead to Bob’s death, Johnny’s death, as well as many injuries throughout both gangs. The book The Outsiders is written by S.E. Hinton and is portrayed through the eyes of a high school student in Tulsa, OK where S.E. Hinton grew up. Hinton began writing The Outsiders in 1965 at the age of 17 and the book was finally published in 1967 when she was 19. The difference in perspective upon the society and social class creates issues throughout The Outsiders and they assume the problems will be solved with violence,
From the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of Heathcliff's life, he has suffered pain and rejection. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is viewed as a thing rather than a child. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out the doors, while Nelly put it on the landing of the stairs hoping that it would be gone the next day. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider. Following the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff suffers cruel mistreatment at the hands of Hindley. In these tender years, he is deprived of love, friendship, and education, while the treatment from jealous Hindley is barbaric and disrupts his mental balance. He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, undergoes regular beatings and forcibly separated from his soul mate, Catherine. The personality that Heathcliff develops in his adulthood has been formed in response to these hardships of his childhood.
From the moment that Heathcliff arrived at Wuthering Heights, he was surrounded my bitterness and hate. Heathcliff was brought into Wuthering Heights to live by Catherine and Hindley’s father, while he was a poor, dirty, and fatherless young boy. This made the children who already lived in Wuthering Heights apprehensive to the young boy, but one of the children, Catherine, eventually learned to accept him. Her brother, Hindley, however, treated Heathcliff as a slave. This fueled a bitter hate towards him deep in Heathcliff.
Heathcliff is a character who was abused in his childhood by Catherine’s brother, Hindley, because of his heritage as a “gypsy”, and Hindley was jealous of the love that Heathcliff got from Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley’s father. This is also selfishness upon Hindley’s part since he only wanted his father’s love for his sister and himself. So to reprimand Heathcl...
The Outsiders is about the life of a 14-year-old boy. The book tells the story of Ponyboy “Curtis” and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. Ponyboy and his two brothers, Darrel (Darry), who is 20, and Sodapop, who is 16, have recently lost their parents in an automobile accident. Pony and Soda are allowed to stay under Darry's guardianship as long as they all behave themselves. The boys are greasers, a class term that refers to the young men on the East Side, the poor side of town. The greasers' rivals are the Socs, short for Socials, who are the "West-side rich kids."
Heathcliff starts off as a young innocent boy, who does not know anything. He is adopted by the Earnshaw family, and then Hindley mistreat Heathcliff as they grow up. Hindley notice that Mr. Earnshaw, his father favors Heathcliff more than him, right away he sees Heathcliff as an enemy. Hindley goes to college and later returns after his father death and seeks revenge on Heathcliff by putting him back to his place. “He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place.”(pg15) Hindley starts by mistreating Heathcliff again just as Hindley did in the first place. His grudge of Mr. Earnshaw's love for the gypsy sets off a reaction for abuse and mistreatment towards him. He physically abuses Heathcliff makes him sleep next to the horses, brings him down to a servant and is not allowed to see Catherine. Hindley’s determ...
After Hindley’s father dies, he begins to abuse poor Heathcliff, taking away his education and forcing him to work out in the field’s and. Mr. Earnshaw’s resentful son Hindley oppresses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Ever since Heathcliff had arrived at Wuthering Heights, Hindley had loathed him and “from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house; and at Mrs. Earnshaw’s death, which happened in less than ...
Wuthering Heights is a novel whose main character is said to have a double significance. He is said to be both the dispossessed and the dispossessor, victim of class hatred and arch – exploiter, he simultaneously occupies the roles of working class outsider and brutal capitalist. Heathcliff has all these characteristics because of his experiences. He is a character moulded by his past.
After Heathcliff gets revenge by bankrupting Hindley for mistreating him (which was Hindley’s revenge for Heathcliff having become his father’s favorite), Hindley’s desire for revenge multiplies. At first he simply wanted to separate Heathcliff from Cathy, but now he tells Isabella, “I will have [my house] back; and I’ll have his gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!” (124). Hindley’s desire for revenge has become murderous and intensely cruel, to the point of wishing Heathcliff’s soul to be in Hell. Heathcliff, originally abused by Hindley, has become the abuser and appears to grow more greedy for revenge as the plot develops. When he explains to Catherine, “ You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style” (100), he is showing her that she can torture him as much as she wants, but he will pass all of this pain onto someone else. The remedy to his pain is to become the inflictor of pain. Compounding his emergence as the abuser, later in the novel Heathcliff develops an interest in tormenting Hindley’s son, Hareton. He wants to “see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” (165), meaning that that he was blown by the wind and became twisted by Hindley, now he will return the favor to Hareton, denying Hareton an
Isolation is a powerful force. Human beings live, work, and play in groups, and to be separate from the whole of humanity can disorient us, debilitate us, and even make us question our place in the world. Isolation is easily confused with other forms of aloneness such as loneliness and alienation, but the condition of being isolated requires that one be detached from others through reasons not in one’s control. This can be taken into context as to why Heathcliff’s feelings of revenge for basically everyone at Wuthering Heights. His feelings overshadowed and clouded his judgement and made him a bitter man, isolating him from those who he once held dear. Heathcliff’s great natural abilities, strength of character, and love for Catherine Earnshaw all enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings to the status of a wealthy gentleman, but his need to revenge himself for Hindley’s abuse and Catherine’s betrayal leads him into a twisted life of cruelty and hatred.
At first, the children of Wuthering Heights (Hindley, Cathy, Nelly) all rejected him for his appearance as a gypsy- they thought of him as knavish, grimy, and uneducated. Despite this, Mr. Earnshaw treated with a certain respect by letting him live as with the Earnshaws while still being an outsider to the family. Yet the spectrum of hostility didn’t end with the children. Mrs. Earnshaw questions her husband’s insight, “asking how [Mr. Earnshaw] could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house” when he added another mouth for her to feed at the dinner table. (Chapter 4). Mr. Earnshaw’s attempt to integrate Heathcliff fails once Hindley takes over Wuthering Heights. Despite basically being middle class under Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley takes it on his own to oppress and torture him. Before this, Heathcliff was on a level playing field class wise compared to the Earnshaws. Heathcliff now finds himself as a servant, a laborer working the fields. By subjugating Heathcliff, Hindley drew the line in the sand. Hindley has effectively forced Heathcliff into a lower class, Hindley has colonized
His strong, merciless hate towards others is a result of the events that occurred in his childhood. “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back.I don’t care how long I wait, if I could only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!” (69) Because of all the torturous things Hindley did to Heathcliff back when they were children, “Hindley had blamed our father for treating Heathcliff too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to the right place,” (30) he hopes Hindley will not die before him just so he can carry out his revenge-driven plan. He is shaped by what has happened in his life previously which then causes meticulous actions that signify his intense hate towards everyone at Wuthering Heights. Although it is essentially not his own fault, some argue that there is no excuse for Heathcliff to act vindictively. In contrast, though, the psychological problems that he experienced have hand-crafted Heathcliff into the person he is. “It expressed, plainer than words could do, the intensest anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge.” (58) This only adds to the complete and serious hatred he has for everyone that even saving his nephew from falling from the balcony was a thwart to his own revenge. The audience can conclude based on the characterization of Heathcliff as malicious that he is only focused on