S.E. Hinton utilizes Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" as a metaphor in The Outsiders to show the loss of innocence in the Greasers' lives, particularly that of Ponyboy and his close buddy Johnny. She also uses it to highlight the fact that even those who seem like they have it all together can still fall victim to society's injustices. Frost's poem is about the transience of beauty and love, two things that every teenager hopes to find forever. But as anyone who has been through high school knows, this hope is often disappointed. The poem also warns against relying on such transient things for happiness, since they can never fill the hole inside you when they are gone. Hinton uses parts of the poem to explain why she included it in the book. She says that she wanted to write a story about innocent people who were victims of injustice. Then she adds that even though these boys appear to be the bad guys, she wants readers to know that they are not really bad people but rather just living their lives under difficult circumstances. Finally, she states that even those who think they are invincible can still lose everything they hold dear, like the characters in her novel who go through many changes over the course of the story.