The choice of a lifetime

Author’s  note: I am writing this to compare John Treegate’s Musket to The Outsiders.

How many times have you really had to make a hard choice or decision that you thought would change the outcome of your life? How many times has that decision truly changed your life entirely? Well, the characters in the following books have to make that hard choice and this is what they chose.

To start this journey, Peter Treegate, the Protagonist of John Treegate’s Musket, must make a choice to either run or try to prove his innocence when a man he volunteers to walk home in the dead of the night is murdered by one of his fellow apprentices and someone else, yet the killing is done with his knife. His choice to run and hide on a boat causing  him to become a galley boy. Then he gets caught up in a hurricane and washes up on shore five days later with amnesia.

If that weren’t enough, Ponyboy Curtis, the protagonist of The Outsiders, must make a decision on what to do when his best friend kills a Soc (rich kids who like to beat on the poor a.k.a. Greasers). The Soc was trying to drown Ponyboy and Johnny comes to his aid. Again an innocent person has to defend against evil. The decision to go to Dallas for help causes them to hide out in an old church for a week while he clears things up. However, while hiding out in the church, one of their cigarettes causes the church to go up in flames with kids trapped inside. Ponyboy and Johnny to go in and rescue them which all leads to Johnny dying of too much smoke inhaled.

Both had to make tough decisions, yet both still stand by their decisions throughout all that happens. Both stand firm and proud. Both watch a murder happen and then make tough choices. Both get heavily injured because of their decisions. Both leave their families because of their decisions. Many things happen to both of them because of  one choice. Their lives were truly flipped upside down because of that one decision they had to make.

To end this rollercoaster ride, A lot of things can happen because of one decision, and one decision that can change your whole life. That is shown in both  of these books. In fact those choices must also be made in real life even if they are not the same decision to be made. Still that one decision, that one choice you need to make, could be the best thing ever, or the one choice that ruins your life.