Rules and Consequences Theme Analysis

Growing up together in a rough part of Tulsa, Oklahoma, that is riddled with crime and gang violence, Bryon and Mark think that rules are meant to be broken, so they constantly flout the law and defy authority. From Mark’s perspective, if they can get away with something, then it isn’t technically wrong. Even though Bryon doesn’t always share this belief—from the start, he has more of a moral compass than Mark does—he is still relatively unbothered by acting unethically. Yet over the course of the novel, Bryon starts to understand the ramifications of their immoral actions and feels guilty about how they have negatively affected other people. Hinton uses Bryon’s shifting attitude to speak to the importance of rules. For the most part, rules are meant to uphold morality, and breaking rules can cause the rule breaker—and the people around them—to suffer.

At the beginning of the novel, Bryon and Mark are rulebreakers and criminals who fail to see how their actions could potentially affect other people—and when they do consider the consequences of their actions, it’s only in the context of making sure that they evade punishment. In the very first scene of the novel, Hinton illustrates Bryon and Mark’s lack of regard for the rules. They sneak into a bar despite being underage in order to “hustle” adults at pool for money. When the bartender, Charlie, warns them that they could get in trouble if they’re caught, Mark immediately dismisses him, confidently declaring that they won’t get caught. Not only do Mark and Bryon disregard the rules, but they also disregard the idea that their actions might have consequences. Mark’s rule-breaking isn’t limited to hustling. At the beginning of the novel, he is on probation for hot-wiring and stealing cars, he shoplifts clothes for Bryon, and he is a notorious pickpocket. Bryon explains that “Stealing was a game to [Mark], something to do for fun and profit, and he was careful not to get caught because that was one of the rules.” The only “rule” Mark heeds to in the book is his personal commitment to avoiding punishment. Instead of considering how his actions affect other people—for instance, he could be stealing cars, money, and clothes from people who desperately need these things—the only consequence he considers is that he could get caught.

As Bryon matures over the course of the book, he starts to understand that rules aren’t meant to be broken and are instead in place for a reason. Rules uphold morality in a society, and breaking those codes of ethics can have dire consequences for the rule-breaker and for other people. Bryon admits early on that “Mark couldn't see anything wrong with stealing stuff. I could.” Although Bryon doesn’t care about Mark’s thefts at this point in the book, he nonetheless senses that, by stealing, the boys are breaking a rule or moral code that shouldn’t be broken. But when Bryon witnesses firsthand the wide-reaching consequences that their rule-breaking can have, he learns the hard way why adhering to the rules in society is important. After a group of older Texan men realize that Bryon hustled them at pool, they hold him and Mark at gunpoint and plan to beat them up. Charlie, the bar owner, intervenes with his own gun, but he is killed in their crossfire. Mark flippantly tells Bryon that he shouldn’t blame himself for what happened, saying, “Things happen, that’s all there is to it.” While Mark fails to see Charlie’s tragic death as a direct consequence of his and Bryon’s own actions, Bryon is plagued with guilt—especially because Charlie warned him not to continue hustling. He logically pieces together that, had they not been hustling, Charlie wouldn’t have died. For Bryon, the consequence of hustling that night was twofold: it led to an innocent man’s death, and it also left Bryon riddled with guilt and sadness. In other words, breaking the rules had devastating consequences for Bryon and those around him, which is enough to make him stop hustling pool altogether. So while Bryon understood right and wrong before, it is only in witnessing the painful consequences of his actions that he fully grasps that rules are in place for a reason.

Having learned the hard way why rules are so important, Bryon tries to get Mark to see how his rule-breaking can—and often does—cause widespread harm. At the end of the book, Bryon and Mark’s 13-year-old friend M&M has a bad drug trip in a hippie house, and doctors don’t think he will ever fully recover from the mental damage. Soon after, Bryon discovers that Mark has been dealing drugs, and even though Mark claims that he didn’t deal to M&M specifically, Bryon sees that Mark could easily have caused the same experience in another person. Bryon realizes in that moment that “Mark had absolutely no concept of what was right and what was wrong; he didn’t obey any laws, because he couldn’t see that there were any.” Rules are meant to serve and protect a community, but because Mark doesn’t care about other people, he also doesn’t care about rules. Frustrated at Mark’s lack of concern about dealing drugs, Bryon turns him in to the authorities, leading a judge to send Mark to prison for five years. Yet even then, Mark never truly acknowledges that his criminality was harmful. He still fails to see the consequences his actions have had for others (like how he’s affected the people he’s dealt drugs to or stolen from, or how he’s affected Bryon) and instead is angry at Bryon for turning him in.