Title: The Outsiders.
Author: Susan Eloise Hinton (S. E. Hinton).
Susan Eloise Hinton was born on July 22, 1948. She is an American writer best known for her young-adult novels (YA), especially The Outsiders (1967), which she wrote during high school. Hinton is credited with introducing the YA genre. She resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband David Inhofe, a software engineer. In 1988 she received the inaugural Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her cumulative contribution in writing for teens.
Summary
The story starts with Ponyboy walking home alone from the movie house when a group of Socs get out of a car. They start to bother him until the greasers come to rescue Ponyboy. The next night, Ponyboy, Johnny and Dally go to the movies and sit behind two Soc girls. After some talking, the boys and girls went to Two-Bit’s house and met Bob and Randy (the girl’s boyfriends). The girls decided that it was better to leave to prevent a fight.
That same night, Darry and Ponyboy argue and in the heat of the moment, Darry slaps Ponyboy across the face. Ponyboy decided to run away. He finds Johnny and both go to the park. There, they find Bob and Randy with a group of Socs. They attack the boys and hold Ponyboy’s head inside the fountain until he blacks out. When he finally wakes up, he notices that Bob was laying on the ground, dead. Johnny tells him that he killed Bob. They run out to an abandoned church in Windrixville with the help of Dally. They hide there for one week, disguising themselves and reading “Gone with the Wind”.
After some days, Dally comes to check on the boys and tells them that after Bob’s death there has been a lot of tension and that there will be a rumble. Johnny tells and shocks Dally by declaring his intention to go back and turn himself in. When they went back to the church to pack their things, they saw that the church was burning with boys inside, so Johnny and Ponyboy decided to save them. Ponyboy faints from the smoke and Johnny suffers severe burns and a fracture.
Then, the gangs arrange a fight without weapons to solve the problems and Ponyboy, together with Dally, escape to go to fight. At the end, the Greasers win and the boys return to the hospital to tell everything to Johnny, who dies because of the injuries. Because of the shocking news, Dally decides to go rob a store where he confronts some cops and ends up dead.
At the end of the story, the judges determine that Ponyboy had no direct participation in Bob’s death so he is free. To not fail his English class, his teacher tells him to write an outstanding autobiographical theme, and it ends up being the story itself.
Characters
Our favorite character was Sodapop; we enjoyed his presence a lot throughout the story and every time he appeared we felt relieved because he was the carefree and easygoing brother. His relationship with Ponyboy was based on trust and we admired and really liked that.
As opposed to Sodapop, our least favorite character was Bob, one of the bad guys and part of the Socs. He was one of the guys that almost made Ponyboy drown, but fortunately for him, Johnny killed him.
Conclusion
We actually really liked the book, although we thought it was a little hard to read sometimes and felt it a bit heavy as there were a lot of unnecessary details, in our opinion. Despite that, the plot was entertaining and we believe this novel could be a good example for humanity; “good” people are able to do terrible things and “bad” people end up not being as bad as they seem to appear. We all have our problems, they do as well, so there is always a reason why they act in a certain way. Doesn’t matter if they are Socs or Greasers, they just want to be happy and accepted for who they are.
Would we recommend it?
Sure, people could definitely give it a try. If seen from an objective point of view, it’s a nice book that teaches an important lesson and, for some reason, reading it puts more things into perspective and makes us feel the urge to change some things in our life-styles.
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