Bob, hateful or not?

[fosterchild]

I haven't read any Bob fics for probably the same reason I haven't read any Cherry fics. I think they're plastic. I've known real life people like them and I think they suck.

I think his portrayal from Randy and Cherry of being a swell guy is probably true for them. I do think he had a genuine hatred, though, for anyone different than him. I don't think he was a sociopathic killer but he did go out looking for trouble and had no remorse, obviously, for the things he did.

I suppose that would make it easy for people to write him as some gruesome freak.

[xolilkelox1]

Well like Cherry said she knew that Bob asked for it and was just looking for someone to say No but of course no ever did and it lead him to his own death which I think is a tragedy and he was drunk I think some Mary-Sue writers forget that and maybe thats why they all make him a "stone cold killer"Drinking makes you do thinks you don't normally do plus he saw these two boys hitting on his girlfriend who where lower class then and that mustve been a big blow to his pride.

[Nittanylizard]

Man, this has to be the most frustrating time I have ever experienced in my writing career. I get so little time to write, primarily due to the toddler who runs over and climbs all over me every freakin' time I get near the computer, lol.

So, I feel like I say this all the time - I'm working on a Bob fic that's about four chapters in. I spent a lot of time backing away from Ponyboy's view of Bob, picked around for anything Pony (or anyone else) said about Bob that wasn't negative, and then came up with what I think is an okay backstory for him, with reasons for his underlying anger and his attacks on Johnny and Ponyboy.

I took the concept of him only doing nasty things while drinking and ran with it. He's got something to be angry about, and he has a score to settle with the greasers, but he needs to be drunk to follow through and act on them. So maybe he isn't such a bad guy, if he can't hit somebody without being intoxicated. The way I fleshed him out, he feels justified in his feelings, but not necessarily his actions.

Have been interrupted three times writing this...

Liz

[fairlane]

I've never thought about how it must have hurt his pride to see his girlfriend with the greasers, but I think that is a very valid point. There is maybe an element too of him trying to save face in front of his friends, probably if he was alone he would have just gone home, whereas since he had a group of friends with him he couldn't just let it go.

And I cannot stand seeing him shown beating up and raping girls, ugh. Like it is just a natural progression from beating up guys - um no, probably not.

(Liz - I feel the same since having my son. When he is awake he wants all my attention and when he's alseep I got a hundred things to try and get done lol. I'm typing one handed now and holding him in the other arm.)

[fosterchild]

So, in esscence, the girl who gave me the black eye a month ago (yes, 34 years old and in my first bar fight which I did not provoke....I got my ass kicked!) is probably a really nice girl except when she's drinking. lol

I realize that any of us who drink and have done stupid things while drinking will blame the booze.

I think maybe Bob used the booze to self-medicate his anger towards his world. And sure, the pride does come into play there.

[fairlane]

I think alcohol can enhance peoples more violent tendencies, especially when there is a group mentality going on. I don't think it is an excuse, but drunk people are less likely to think about the consequences, or not care.

[samanthamae]

I have this friend, and...let's call her Sally.

Now, Sally has a nice boyfriend. She enjoys his company.

However--Sally likes to party. A lot. And in high school parties, we all know what goes on there. So I'm at a party with "Sally" and every time I saw her, she was kissing a different boy.

Sober Sally would never, ever, ever do it. I kind of think of "Sally" when I think of Bob. Maybe he didn't jump greasers when he wasn't drinking. Well, he had a reason to go after Johnny and Pony, as xolilkelox1 mentioned. Maybe he had a reason to go after Johnny...who knows.

And I highly doubt Bob would ever rape a girl, especially just because she's a greaser. He wouldn't want to have a reputation for doing that to girls. He wants a reputation for being a cool Soc. If anything I said made sense, please tell me...

[zevie]

I think he's probably a jerk, spoiled but charismatic. But, even jerks have to have reasons, which is where I think the demonizing line gets crossed. I wouldn't want to read about him being a real nice guy who wouldn't hurt a fly, but I wouldn't want to read about him frothing at the mouth and jumping everyone he sees. He's gotta have a reason.

No one would have respect for a guy who hit a woman, but a teenage high-school idol who can't get any from his girlfriend? He wouldn't have much respect from his peers either if that was the case. Especially if he's double dating, I think he'd be worried about that. I think, if he does change that much when he's drinking, he'd probably be hassiling Cherry pretty badly. I always kind of thought that when she said "too many things can happen" (or something like that) she was worried about him pushing her, as well as getting into fights with other guys. Dally hassles her so much without even knowing her. She pisses him off, and I get the impression he would have gotten physical with her, the way Pony describes the situation. Is Dally that much worse than Bob?

From what I can tell of drunk people, they usually seem to be one of two types: either they have repressed a part of their personality that comes out when they're drunk, or, their sober characteristics get exaggerated. Or a little of both. I think either would be believable - sort of like Two-Bit getting a lot more talkative or getting quieter and depressed. We never see Bob when he's not drunk, so I think you could take it either way. What Cherry and Randy say make it seem like it's the first (and I think that's what most posts here agree with) - but, he could have been verbally hassling the greasers all the time, and they probably wouldn't have held it against him if he treated the Socs decently. They were super-Socs too, even if they realized it, they kept acting like it. Anyway, I could see him being either nice when sober or an all-around jerk. I think he'd be another interesting character to explore. It's just when he pops in for one scene to be a villain and then disappears completely once Dally/Soda kicks his ass that he gets annoying. Life tells me he couldn't have been the only jerk in that high school, lol.

[gardenfli]

This might be an unpopular opinion, but from a literary p.o.v. I quite like Bob's character.
There are hints in the book, such as Randy & Cherry's quotes that he is much multi-deminsional and complex than the one-sided villan that Pony (understandably) sees him as throughout much of the book. I think that there is a great opportunity to flesh out Bob's character and using some of the clues from the book, give him a much more nuanced characterization, as oppossed to the psychopath that he is often portrayed on in fan fiction.

[BlindedxxFalcon]

gardenfli, I totally agree! I'd love to read a good Bob fic.

[zickachik73]

I think of Bob as I think of all the people who are distinctly and definitively prejudiced. Hateful - probably not. He was probably part product of his raising, part product of his society, and also, probably in large part, a product of his own unwillingness to reconsider.

Naturally, Randy and Cherry will consider him a decent guy; he was not on the receiving end of his disdain. Cherry herself may have been more sensitive to the matter, but she also proved herself unwilling to change. Randy seemed to be the only one ready to re-think and remeasure his standards, post-trauma.

[Des]

I've always thought of him as the "Poor Little Rich Boy". Even when I first read the book over 20 years ago, he came across to me as someone who had been handed everything he could ever want without having to do anything to earn it, and had become spoiled rotten because of it.

Going by the people I knew at that age who were like Bob in my own little world, I always classified them as being prejudiced against anyone who didn't have the advantages they did, and looking down on others as being way beneath their own social class.

After watching them more closely, I was shocked to discover that about 90% of them had no "real" friends who liked them for themselves instead of what they had, were constantly having feelings of dissatisfaction over their lives in general, and had nothing to fight for that could give them a feeling of satisfaction.

I feel sorry for Bob. He was an outsider in his own social world because of the way he was.

[Tensleep]

I never really thought about Bob. I guess I see him as that kid looking for attention, doing the worst he dared just so someone would tell him 'no' instead of smacking him on the wrist and letting him go without much more than that. He drinks, he gets others in trouble with him and he is a bully. He's definitely learned his prejudices and he acts on them. But you can't single him out because he actually got what we (as Pony and Greaser sympathizers) think he had coming. There were others who got away with being like that. He may have stood out, but he was just one of the crowd.

Aside from that, he was just the means to an end for the story. He is fun to play around with, though.

Anyways, I'm about to ramble, I can feel it, so no more from me.

See ya in the funny papers!!!

Tens

[Two-Bitty]

Oh, Bobby! I've been meaning to write something about this guy.

I really want to show a side no one has seen, the side Cherry told us about; that he was real sweet at times. And I don't know if this is just cause I love Leif Garrett, but he sounds fun to write about.

Like it does most things, booze gets Bob hateful and over-protective over Cherry when it hits him. He was willing to kill Ponyboy to keep Cherry his girl.
Then as Cherry said, he was real sweet at times. I wondered if he was just sweet to her, or to everyone.
Randy said that he was trying to make someone say 'No', to lay down the law. He wanted to be treated like a human being, so he could act like one and not just an animal, as we've seen.

Bob is certianly the least wrote about and the one that needs a good fic to show the side we didn't see.

[Maddiecake]

I wrote a oneshot about Bob about a year ago. Well more like two because one was a songfic... but anyway. I don't think that Bob was such a bad guy, but he does seem like he's looking for some sort of attention because if you remember what Randy said, his parents don't actually punish him. I used to know this girl and her mom would never punish her for anything she did, and she constantly did things to see just how far she could get.

And that's sort of what I think Bob tried to do. He wanted to know how far he could go before his parents would begin to punish him and it never actually happened. As for jumping Ponyboy and Johnny, he was drunk and probably not so awful when he wasn't drinking.

... I think I just reiterated what everyone else was saying (and a multi-chaptered Bob fic would definitely be interesting).