The Outsiders

The Bibliography
Hinton, S. E. 1967. The Outsiders. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670532576

The Characters
Ponyboy Curtis, his brothers Sodapop and Darry, Dally, Johnny, Two-Bit and Steve are the Greasers, the main characters in The Outsiders. The main main characters are Ponyboy, Johnny and Dally. There are also other characters, the Greasers' rivals, the Socs.

The Plot
Greasers and Socs don't get along. They fight over anything and sometimes, for no reason at all, other than the fact that the Greasers don't have money and the Socs have too much. After Johnny gets beat up by the Socs, he's scared all the time. When he and Ponyboy get jumped by a couple of drunk Socs one night after the movies, things take a turn for the worse. The Socs try to drown Ponyboy, but Johnny just can't take it anymore. He kills one of the Socs with his knife, so he and Ponyboy have to run away. While they're away, the boys learn a few life lessons and, what else, become heroes after pulling kids out of a burning church. Tragically, Johnny doesn't survive long after the fire, which leads Dally, his mentor and hero, to get himself killed.

The Setting
a city in Oklahoma, or at least that's what I deduced from watching the movie and reading background information on the author

The Theme
division of social classes

The Style
first person, written from Ponyboy's point of view

The Strengths and Weaknesses
I know I've said previously that I think anyone with enough creativity and who does enough research can write anything they want to, but I think I'm going to have to retract that statement. S.E. Hinton, who happens to be female (which I didn't know prior to reading this book and doing research myself) was 16 when she wrote this book. I felt a little odd reading it and finding out that Ponyboy thinks his brothers are handsome and that some of the Socs look good in their burgandy sweaters. It seems a tad on the girly side to me. The Greasers get a little bit too emotional I think for dirty ol' boys that get into knock-down-drag-out fights. That's a definite weakness of The Outsiders.

There are strengths, too, of course. Anyone who reads this book will feel an attachment to anyone they consider a close friend. They'll relate to Ponyboy's devotion to Sodapop and Johnny's to Dally, and likewise, Dally's to Johnny.

The Review
Booklist
(November 15, 1997; 9780440967699 )

Gr. 7^-10. In a book now considered a classic, Ponyboy can count only on his friends when it comes to mixing it up with the Socs, a gang of rich kids who like nothing better than beating up on greasers like himself.

The Connection
The most perfect connection would be to read this book, then watch the film adaptation of it by Francis Ford Coppola. A lot of the girliness that I didn't like about the book was left out in the movie, although the boys do still cry a lot. Plus, all the 80s hunks are in it, like Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.