#this is book derived idk if it applies to musical soda

[sodapopper]

as president of the sodapop curtis bawl baby club, what kind of stuff do you think he cries about

I didn’t know I was president of that club, or that it was even a club, but I accept this role with great delight! May the bawl baby agenda live on.

I think Soda cries easily (and often) over little things, but represses over big things. In a lot of ways he’s an unbothered king, and simply does not care, but I can see his natural empathy/sensitivity working against him. This is a kid who would cry over worms dying on the sidewalk. He cries over a teddy bear abandoned in the parking lot. He cries over the dogs at the shelter who never get picked. Ponyboy writes Soda a birthday card and he sobs buckets over it for a full 15 minutes because he’s so touched.

Soda’s emotions are like a spring thunderstorm; they appear unexpected, hit hard, and are gone just as quickly. He seems to feel everything all at once all the time, but always bounces back, so it’s assumed his sensitivity is surface level and doesn’t deeply affect him.

But I think Sodapop cries over little things because he can’t express himself with big things. He holds back on the things that really matter, that actually cause him pain, because he’s busy making space for the emotions of the people around him. He doesn’t want to worry his brothers, or give them extra burden. Also he doesn’t think his problems are as bad or worthy of attention as theirs

At his core, Soda is a caregiver, and the one thing caregivers are chronically bad at is receiving care. Nobody realizes when he’s struggling because he always seems so stable, and they just assume that if he was having a hard time, he’d show it—like he does with everything else. He’s the gentle one, the listener, the one who always understands, and most importantly, nothing ever seems to get him down.

So on the rare occasions when he does break, like at the end of the book—not just teary eyes over an abandoned teddy bear, but truly loses it—he breaks hard because months of pent up emotion is exploding out of him like a busted dam.

It scares his brothers to death.