In That was Then, This is Now there were many ways in which family was an issue. The first main predicament was Mark. His parents had shot each other when he was very young, and he had needed a place to go. Bryon's family took him in, as if he were a brother of Bryon, and helped raise him. Bryon and Mark acted like brothers, and both helped to bring money in for the family (for money was scarce).
The neighborhood and people from The Outsiders had two large communities, where everyone helped each other. If a person was a 'hood' they could almost always have a place to sleep on the couch of another hood, if they needed. The whole neighborhood was like one big family. This family style, is also present in That was Then, This is Now and is partly why Bryon's family brought in Mark. One virtue that S.E. Hinton was portraying in both of these novels is brotherhood. Relaying on each other, and helping when there is a need is the major points of brotherliness, beyond the 'good Samaritan' call of duty.
Mark was loved as one of the family, until a mishap occurs. M&M, while at the happy hippy house, tried a stronger drug. He ended up having a very bad trip, and kept recounting what had happened to him. He was recounting how he "kept trying to get back, but the spiders held me down. Held me down and chewed on the colors and me went in and out. I listened to the colors and they were screaming too." (S.E. Hinton 140) Bryon was quite upset about this, for it was his girlfriend's brother. Directly after that, Bryon found that Mark was selling LSD. Even if Mark had not sold LSD to M&M, Bryon was still infuriated, and called the cops.
This was a case, of when brotherhood had gone as far as it could. Bryon had loved Mark as a brother, and brought him in, as a long lost brother. Family is extremely important, for they are someone who you can always relay on to be there for you, and help you though the tough times. Bryon, and his family, had done that for Mark, but it was too much that he was a drug dealer, and Bryon pulled the plug on his brother. Mark went to jail, and served time for his crimes. When in jail, he acted out, and was forced to serve a longer sentence because of that. Losing his family, and his way of life by going to jail, really tore Mark apart, and shows the importance of family, and good decisions. Was this a good decision? If was in the shoes of Bryon, I would have talked to Mark. I would try to change his perspective of life by putting myself in front, the person he cared the most about. That would have been enough to change Mark. This would have changed Mark into a more responsible person. Not a person, who viewed laws and rules as nothing but words, but took those seriously.
This book took strong topics and put them in front of the readers. It showed the difference in the past and the present, the “then” and the “now.” One pair of those topics was love and hate. The love between two brothers changed to hate. In addition Bryon got poor from rich. It isn’t the richness in the means of money, it the richness in the relationships. He started from support of Mark, his gang, M&M, Charlie, Cathy and more. At the end he lost all the relationships. This novel also showed: good and bad, close and far, outsiders and insider, and friend and enemy.
This book was a great book to read. It taught me to give importance to each relationship because you don’t know what tomorrow has in store with you. The person you love the most today, can be the person you hate the most tomorrow. Take decisions of your life carefully and the decisions that are going to have a effect on other people’s lives.
