What does the phrase Stay Gold symbolise in the book The Outsiders by S E Hinton?
Actually, the title of the Robert Frost poem is “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” 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. The delicate gold of spring leaves will inevitably turn into the green leaves of summer. Eden (or Paradise) will be lost–eventually subsumed in grief. In The Outsiders, this is the poem Ponyboy reads Johnny while they are hiding, saying he doesn’t really understand it. The words, “Stay gold,” are Johnny’s last words before he dies. Later in their copy of Gone with the Wind, Ponyboy finds Johnny’s explanation of the poem. “Stay gold,” means, hold on to the wondrous things you see and experience while you are young and innocent. Of course, the early golden leaves will turn green, spring will turn to summer, dawn to day, youth to maturity; but you can hold on to the wonder, the sense of innocence, the “goldenness” of
