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Narrative In The Outsiders

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In 1967, Viking Press first published the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. S.E. Hinton began to write her book at the age of fifteen, and published it when she was just 17 years old. The Outsiders is a young adult fiction book following two rival gangs — ‘The Greasers’ and ‘The Socs’. The story is told as a first-person narrative through the voice of Ponyboy Curtis, the youngest member of The Greasers, and dwells into a life changing incident that occurs, and the tragic events that follow.
Ponyboy Curtis, the youngest member of the Greasers, is the protagonist of The Outsiders. Ponyboy describes himself as decent looking, but not as good-looking as his elder brother, Sodapop. Although Ponyboy sees himself only as average looking, others say that he is above average with “light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes.” His hair is “longer than …show more content…

For example, when Ponyboy met Sherri, he felt like it was easy to talk to her and although he didn’t believe it yet, further into the story, he begins to believe that not all Socs are the same. After the boys meet Sherri and Marcia, their lives change completely as they need to go on the run after Johnny murders Bob - the Soc who was drowning Ponyboy in the fountain. Another change that can be seen is Ponyboy’s understanding of his brother Darry. Ponyboy matures quite a bit after everything that occurs from his encounter with Sherri till the time they spent hiding in the church after Bob’s death. On his return, with his new-found maturity, Ponyboy begins to understand Darry better and realizes that he truly does love him. A major change that happened to Ponyboy was the death of his best friend, the pet of the gang - Johnny. The loss caused a lot of trauma for him, even forcing himself to pretend it never happened and that Johnny was still alive for some

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