The Outsiders 'And Sorry Wrong Number'

We are all judged on our appearance, whether if you are popular, smart, nerdy, rich, or poor. We all choose who we want to be in a game called life. We all judge everyone whether they are pretty or ugly even if we do not know them. We may hate a person without even knowing a single detail about them. They can be a complete stranger yet we still hate them for various weird reasons we cannot even explain why. Familiarity alters perception even if it is you yourself that you question. It may take us a while to realize that we are wrong, but whatever it takes, and we will get there one way or another. Both the novel, The Outsiders, and the drama, “Sorry Wrong Number,” tell a story of a character and their change in perception. In the novel The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, Ponyboy Curtis

has two main changes in perception throughout the novel due to many dramatic events. Ponyboy and his brothers, Sodapop and Darry, belong to a group of poor teenage boys called greasers. Many of them have led hard lives already, and they are tough, angry and unforgiving. They often fight with the Socs, the group of wealthy boys who beat them up for fun. The novel is told in first-person narrative by protagonist Ponyboy Curtis and takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1965. Meanwhile the drama, “Sorry Wrong Number,” tells the story of protagonist Mrs. Leona Stevenson whom overhears a conversation, due to a telephone glitch, about a plan to kill a woman. She overhears that the victim is a woman, home alone, and lives near a bridge. Mrs. Stevenson finally begins to piece together the mystery later on in the drama once she realizes that she is the intended victim for she is home alone and lives near a bridge. The drama takes place in Mrs. Stevenson’s bedroom in the 1940’s and is told in third-person point of view. Although both Ponyboy and Mrs. Stevenson seem completely different, they are very much alike because they are both a dynamic character who undergoes an important change in perception.
Sometimes it may take a while to learn what a person is really like, and what we learn is different from what we first perceive.

As the book, The Outsiders, begins, Ponyboy initially believes that the Socs have it better than the Greasers and that they do not have any problems. Cherry Valance and Randy Adderson both taught Ponyboy that Socs are not completely different from the Greasers. They both have problems that are not-so-happy to deal with for example. Cherry Valance implied that things are “rough all over” in page 35 and Ponyboy finally realized what she meant towards the middle-end of the book in page 117. We can see Ponyboy’s opinions changing when he and Two-Bit are at the Tasty Freeze in chapter 7. Two-Bit had asked what “Mr. Super-Soc” (referring to Randy) had to say on page 118 and Ponyboy replies back saying, “He ain’t a Soc… he’s just a guy.” Ponyboy will judge Socs differently because he realized then that Greasers and Socs are both the same and that the only thing separating each group was money. Ponyboy learns that familiarity alters perceptions. Both Socs and Greasers have problems let alone everyone. In fact, things are “rough all over” just as Cherry had

suggested.
Ponyboy has another change in perception. Ponyboy originally believed that Darry didn’t love him because of the way Darry treated him. Darry was always pushing Ponyboy to his maximum potential, and he was also overprotective. This definitely was not the case because Darry did love him so very much. Darry always treated him the way he had because he had never raised two boys before and he was just doing so the only way he knew how to. Ponyboy was just going about it the wrong way and he finally realized that when in page 98, he realizes that Darry does in fact love him. Ponyboy, being the narrator, tells us in page 98, “In that second what Soda and Dally and Two-Bit had been trying to tell me came through. Darry did care about me, maybe as much as he cared about Soda, and because he cared he was trying too hard to make something of me.” The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel as Ponyboy learns some valuable life lessons shared throughout the book.
In the drama “Sorry Wrong Number,” written by Lucille Fletcher, Protagonist Mrs. Leona Stevenson had an erroneous initial perception likewise to Ponyboy. As the drama had first begun, Mrs. Stevenson listened in on a conversation about a murder plot due to a telephone glitch. The victim was described to be a woman whom lives near a train station, has a private patrolman on her block, and is home alone. Mrs. Stevenson, being oblivious to the fact that she was the intended victim, initially believed that a woman (not her) was to be murdered that night. We can see Mrs. Stevenson’s mind changing when in lines 850-860, Mrs. Stevenson says desperately to the operator, “You’ve got to help me! There’s someone in this house- someone who’s going to murder me!” At the end of the novel, Mrs. Stevenson is murdered; therefor she is dead and does not have a future.
In both The Outsiders and “Sorry, Wrong Number,” it teaches us readers that familiarity alters perception. Ponyboy Curtis realized that the Socs and the Greasers were practically the same thing because they were both groups of people with many different problems and the only thing separating the two was money. In the beginning, Ponyboy was like any Greaser and he thought of the Socs as rich, stuck-up snobs who always picked on the Greasers, and thought that they are better than everyone else. When Ponyboy got the chance and actually met two of the Socs, both Cherry Valance and Randy Adderson, he realized that the Socs are like the Greasers and they are not what he and the rest of the Greasers had thought of. Similarly, if Mrs. Stevenson were thinking and got to know herself from another’s point of view, she would have learned that she was “a querulous, self-centered neurotic.” Mrs. Stevenson was unaware of how others thought of her because she did not even know the way she acted to others. It takes knowing a person to realize who this person really is even if it is yourself. Ponyboy and Mrs. Stevenson were both selfish and self-absorbed. Ponyboy was egocentric because he only thought of himself and the things he wanted in the beginning of the story. He has lived a hard childhood and his parents were killed in an automobile accident. Similarly, Mrs. Stevenson was an all-around self-centered character who only thought of herself. The difference between the two characters is that Ponyboy is still alive because he put his bad actions to an end. On the contrary, Mrs. Stevenson is dead because she had gotten killed by the murderer. Although the two were written for a different timeline, one in 1965 and the other in the 1940’s, both protagonists appear similar in some ways. Never judge a person by their appearance, first impressions, or who they hang out with. The things we observe are superficial; they are false impressions that don’t tell anything. “Never judge a book by its cover.”