What Does Nothing Gold Can Stay Mean

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The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” means that nothing good can stay, in other words, you won’t always have that goodness and innocence within you. The poem begins when you are first born, which is when you are gold, innocent and pure of heart, but as you mature you commence to make dreadful decisions. As you continue making bad decisions your gold begins to dwindle because you are no longer pure of heart, for you have now committed several sins. These sins include being rude and disrespectful, having envy of others and much more dreadful decisions one may take. Essentially being the meaning of the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. Ponyboy now fully comprehends what the meaning of the poem is. You can see this when Johnny says to Ponyboy “Stay gold, …show more content…

Just like how that is the meaning in the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” as to where a person is to soon make dreadful decisions and have his/her ‘gold’ go away at one time. Johnny also tells Pony to stay gold because he does not want him to commit any wrong actions and decisions because that will prevent him from being the kind and innocent person that he is. By having previous knowledge, Johnny also does not want Ponyboy to commit bad decision and then have to pay for them like how he did when he killed Bob; he was forced to run away. Being the reason for which Johnny told Ponyboy to ‘stay …show more content…

First, at one point in life you will come across a time where you will feel angry and have the need to express that anger in words or actions like when having a discussion with someone. In other times you may make horrible and devastating decisions that can hurt you or another person. No one can remain pure of heart and gold forever, it does not matter how hard you try. In Ponyboy’s case, I don’t believe he will stay gold like Johnny advised him to before his death. Since, the fact that he still has to support Darry and be aware of Socs can really influence anger and sadness. For example on page 173 Ponyboy says “It used to be that I’d just stand there and let Darry yell at me, but lately I’d be yelling right back.” This is letting you know Ponyboy is commencing to stand up for himself. But this will only lead to more fights between Pony and Darry and wrong decisions. Once this occurs, unfortunately Pony will end up having his ‘gold’ depleted. I do not believe that Ponyboy will remain gold just like Johnny told him to for this

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