The Outsiders Essay

I am discussing the book the outsiders by S.E Hinton and analyzing the impact violence has on the main characters. My main aim of this essay is to assess and demonstrating the emotional and physical damage to the characters Johnny, bob and Dally caused by violence.

Violence affects Johnny’s mental attitude. When Ponyboy was beaten up by Socs, Johnny with other greater came to help Ponyboy. Therefore, Ponyboy started introduceing each characters. Here is a quote which Ponyboy describe his best friend Johnny “if you can picture a little a dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers, you’ll have Johnny. ”(Hinton P12) Johnny was looked like a poor puppy which had been kicked by many times because family violence happened on himself everyday after his father got drunk.

Later, Johnny conveys his guilt to Ponyboy when he says: “‘There sure is a lot of blood in people.’”(Hinton 74), nearly quoting Shakespeare in Macbeth. In a later conversation with Johnny, Ponyboy gets thinking about this new world he has been thrust into. In the text he says: “I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me.”(Hinton 76) This shows how Ponyboy likes when the hero can beat the villain and get a pretty sunset at the end. But now Ponyboy has to deal with the real-world effects of violence, and he doesn’t like it. This marks one of Ponyboy’s first major changes of his mindset on violence.

The Outsiders is a young adult novel written by S.E. Hinton. The book was first published in 1967 by The Viking Press. Today, the book is published under Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group. The book has a total of a hundred and eighty pages. The Outsiders fits in the genre of young-adult fiction because it relates to teens on emotional levels. Like Ponyboy, the teen protagonist of the story, teens relate to his emotional growth as he tries to piece his life together. The story follows a rivalry in a socially divided community. The Greasers are a gang of teenage boys who live on the east side of town; the wrong side of town. Their rivals, the Socials, better known as the Socs; come from the wealthier side of town. The two groups are always head to head with one another, seeking a fight. Ponyboy belongs to the Greasers. He is the youngest out of the three brothers in his family. Apart from his brothers, Ponyboy hangs out with Johnny, Dallas, Two-Bit and others who are also Greasers. The rivalry between the two groups heightens when Johnny kills Bob, a Soc, in an attempt to save Ponyboy from drowning. In this book report, I will go through the meaning of this book and my opinion on the story itself.

The 1967 novel The Outsiders by S.E Hinton is about the social outcasts; the Greasers and their rivalry against the high class Socs. In the beginning of the book the characters values and attitudes are revealed to the reader through the point of view of Ponyboy. As the book progresses and the lives of the characters take a turn for the worse there is a significant impact on the characters resulting in an alteration of their values and attitudes. Ponyboy, Dally and Johnny experience these changes due to the death of Bob the Soc and the chain of events that follow.

While reading The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, I felt as if I took a time travel to the 1960’s. The book clearly gives an insight to the past. Unlike other book, The Outsiders has its own unique meaning. The author created something different than a modern clique book that I read in my day to day life. Hinton’s word choice creates an interesting book where it felt as if it was non-fiction than young-adult fiction. I like this book because the author made something extraordinary by stating the past rather than another author’s writing twenty-first century book.

Have you ever wondered how the 1960’s was like? Would you have been fearful, jovial, or melancholy? In the book, The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton the main character Ponyboy Curtis lives with his two brothers, Sodapop and Darry, and is involved in a gang called the “greasers.” Ponyboy realizes what it is to be a kind person instead of being violent, he is always on top of his studies and is very observant of others.

The book, and the movie, “the Outsiders” is about a conflict between greasers and socs. Up until the point where Johnny kills a soc, there are mostly only small fights and arguments between the two. The story “the Outsiders” takes place in the 1960’s, when there were two main lifestyles. Greasers and Socs. Greasers are known for greasing their hair. Socs are rich kids who have good clothes, drive mustangs, and always have an argument against the greasers. The main character in S. E. Hinton’s book “the Outsiders” is Ponyboy Curtis. He has two older brothers Darry and Soda. Pony is 14 years old and his best friend, Johnny, is 16 years old. S. E. Hinton wrote “the Outsiders” when she was 17 years old. Her book was published in 1967. The

The Outsiders is a novel written by Susan Eloise Hinton, also known as S.E Hinton. The setting of the story takes place in the 1960s. The Outsiders is written in first person view, by Ponyboy Curtis. The story revolves around the greasers and Socs. The Socs are the west side rich kids, they wrecked houses and “threw beer blasts for kicks”. While the Greasers were the east side kids, they “drove old souped-up cars, held up gas stations and had gang fights once in a while.” One of the conflicts the characters face is man vs man, which is because the greasers and Socs don’t get along, this is because they feel superior to each other. They both had different ways of lives, they did different things for fun, and they did not understand each other. This conflict was later resolved towards the end of the story when Ponyboy speaks to Randy about no longer fighting after Bob’s death.

The theme of The Outsiders is violence doesn’t solve everything. In this book it’s the classic conflict between the socs—short for socials—and the greasers who have been having a conflict for ages and still today. After coming back from the drive In Ponyboy accidentally fell asleep with his friend Johnny in ‘the lot’ after he woke up he ran back home to his brothers Darry and Sodapop got mad and Darry pushed Ponyboy and out of fear Ponyboy ran away, he went back to the lot to find Johnny and went to walk to the park and back, but when they got to the park a group of socs pulled up in their car and got out and started chasing Ponyboy and Johnny and caught them and started drowning Ponyboy while Johnny took out his blade – that he started to carry around out of fear when a previous accouter with the same group of socs – and stabbed Bob, the head soc to death.

In 2016, “there were an estimated 17,250 murders in the U.S…”(www.fbi.gov) This alarmingly large number is a product of violence. Throughout history, violence was used to dispute arguments over land and religions. Our careless use of violence through history is damaging to all people. The use of violence is demonstrated in the book, The Outsiders.

At the time, Johnny felt as though he was taking control of his life in the only way that he thought was possible. This single act of aggression followed a series of events that lead Ponyboy on a path of self-examination, where he began to question the reasons for conflict between the Socs and Greasers. As stated by Ponyboy, “A fair fight isn’t rough […]. Blades are rough. So are chains and heaters and pool sticks and rumbles. Skin fighting isn’t rough. It blows off steam better than anything” (Hinton). Such activities allow the teenagers to build characterization by releasing their endless supply of energy and pent-up aggression. Also, the novel demonstrates author inflicted violence or death and suffering when Johnny died from his severe injuries after he rescued children from a burning building. Johnny’s act of honorable sacrifice allowed Ponyboy and his friends to rise beyond their lives of gangs and violence. The senselessness of all the violence that occurred throughout the novel allowed teenagers to grow and develop a different perspective of the world. Ponyboy came

Violence accounts for 1.4 million deaths each year and most of them are because of appearances of people. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is a book about two gangs (Socs and Greasers) who have a negative relationship. This negative relationship leads to violence such as fighting and even stabbing. This happens because of the appearances of the gang members. If someone would dress as a greaser and walk up to a group of socs they would probably get beat up. The author S.E. Hinton wanted to address the readers that you should not judge someone by the outside of them and not use violence as the answer.

In the 1960s, social dynamics and cliques of teenage life were just as important as they are today. “The Outsiders” portrays a gang of Greasers struggling to understand others, their emotions, and how to overcome the obstacles that are a part of life. The novel describes in great and accurate detail their lifestyle, including the way they dressed and spoke, but glosses over much of the heavier aspects of life during the 1960s, such as the Antiwar Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Though these aspects would have impacted the characters heavily, they are never mentioned by the characters. Thus, “The Outsiders” presents an idealized version of life which does not acknowledge the important movements and events of the 1960s, including

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools” -Martin Luther King Jr. This quote means that we can either work together with the people we disagree with, or we can be violent with one another and make the dispute even worse. In the novel, The Outsiders, it teaches us that violence never will never grant us what we wish. Violence is never a vital thing we should cause when we face the obstacles of our daily lives.