Ponyboy's Attitudes Toward Reality In The Outsiders

By looking at the incidents happened around Ponyboy and the changes of Ponyboy’s attitudes towards reality, we can see that Ponyboy has matured and learned the essence of solving problems, which most readers don’t see; this is important because it reveals the relationship between dreams and reality, that is cocooning from the world is not going to solve any problems, instead, only through facing the reality could we regain lost courage and break the obstacles.
The word “cigarette” was mentioned in the outsiders for forty-one times. Do you know how many times did the word “Ponyboy” involved with the word “cigarette” throughout the whole book? Twenty-four times! More than a half! The result is shocking or even ironic because when thinking of

So does Ponyboy; all the sudden incidents horrified him, a fourteen-year-old barely matured boy; it was too hard for him to accept the cold or even horrendous facts, so he chose to neglect the reality he had to face in order to eliminate his fear and affliction. When Pony and Johnny were on the run, Ponyboy kept thinking about cigarette, as if he could not live without it. “I was shaking. I want a cigarette. I wanted a cigarette. I want a cigarette.” But smoking did not bring him peace; instead, brought him bigger trouble. The lit cigarette triggered the fire, put those innocent children into danger. Ponyboy realized his mistake, running into the church regardless of his own safety. This is the act of facing the reality, compensating the mistakes he had made by actively doing things to stop things from getting worse. That was the time Pony felt relieved and free from guilt, it was just what cigarette could not bring him. Similarly, later Ponyboy refused to accept Johnny’s death, he kept persuading himself that Johnny was not dead, escaping from the truth. Lying in bed smoking, doing badly in schoolwork, he tried to use illusion and dreaming to distort his