Author’s biography:
Susan Eloise Hinton was born on July 22, 1950, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There wasn't much to do there as a kid so she turned to literature as a way of entertainment. When she was a Junior in high school, her dad got cancer so she started writing as a way to get some money for the treatment. During this time she wrote to the outsiders. The Outsiders was a very big success among teenagers, selling more than four million copies in the United States. Her book’s success helped Hinton to attend the University of Tulsa, where in 1970 she earned an education degree and met her future husband, David Inhofe.
Summary:
The story is about the rivalry between two gangs, the greasers and the socs. Ponyboy (protagonist) is a member of the greasers with his brothers, Sodapop and Darry (guardian), Johnny, Dally and others. One night, Ponyboy and Johnny go to the movies with Dally where they meet two soc girls, Cherry and Marcia. After the movie they walk the girls to the house but they are intercepted by Bob and Randy, their boyfriends.
Ponyboy gets home very late and this makes Darry furious so they begin to fight. Darry slaps Ponyboy so he runs away. On his way he finds Johnny and they both head to a park. There they are intercepted by Bob, Randy and other soc boys. They start fighting and one of the soc boys holds Ponyboy’s head under the water of a fountain until he blacks out. When he regains consciousness he sees Johnny and Bob’s dead body. Johnny stabbed him because they were going to kill Ponyboy.
They both run to see Dally and he gives them some money, a gun and jackets. They hide on a abandoned church in another town. That is until Johnny decides to turn himself in for having killed Bob and Dally was going to drive them home. When they were leaving they saw that the church was on fire so they rushed inside to save some children that were there. They rescue them but Ponyboy blacks out and Johnny suffers terrible injuries. Johnny then dies and Dally loses his mind and robs a grocery store. When he was surrounded by police men, he pointed his gun at one of them and the cops shot him dead.
Ponyboy passes out and then spends some days at the hospital. He gets depressed by then he reconciles with Darry and gets over Johnny and Dally’s deaths. He decides to write their story for a class and this turns into the novel itself.
Characters:
Favorite:
My favorite character was Johnny because of his development. He started as a very quiet boy that then had the guts to kill the leader of the rival gang to save one of his friends and then sacrificed his life to save some kids. I really liked this transition.
Least favorite:
My least favorite character was Ponyboy. During half of the book he is passed out. Everytime something happens he blacks out. When he gets into the fight at the park with the socs he passes out. During the fire he passed out. When cops shot Dally he passed out. It really annoys me that he is always kind of a viewer in everything.
Would you recommend it?
Yes, I would. I enjoyed that there was constant action during the whole book and the characters showed a lot of development. It also shows us the life of a gang member from the inside and tells us very valuable lessons.
By Simón Duarte, Step 11 Yellow
