The Outsiders

I found it easy to sympathize with Ponyboy Curtis as a victim of circumstance. He’s poor and raised by someone other than his parents, just like I was. More than that, I loved how he doesn’t cling to any of the early illusions about himself, his family, the neighborhood gang, or even the rival gang from the West side. 

Instead, he tries to see things as they are. And even though this 14-year-old punk, who belongs to a “gang of greasers,” discovers how unfair life can be, he still takes it upon himself to give meaning to what is lost.… show more.

Hinton brings grittiness and verisimilitude to the YA genre and respect for the young reader in this story of rival gangs in Middle America that she wrote, incredibly, while she was still in high school. Ponyboy, the fourteen-year-old protagonist, thinks he has life figured out—until he doesn’t—and who can’t relate to that no matter how old you are?

His narration strikes a conversational tone, as if you’re sitting next to him out on the front stoop at night, smoking cigarettes while he tells you what just happened. 

My son was really taken by the ways that the author portrays kids—not much older than him and not so long ago—dealing with an unsafe social scene in ways that are far above their maturity level.

He also loved the pack loyalty among the greaser gang, as well as the small bursts of empathy between the rival gangs after both groups have lost members.

The Outsiders is regarded by many readers to be S.E. Hinton's finest novel.

The book is narrated by Pony Boy Curtis and takes the reader through a slew of emotions, from kindness to caring, to friendship and depression, all within a framework that can be considered genius by today’s standards. Pony Boy's friendship with Johnny is a recurring theme throughout the book, not just through him, but through the characters involved.

The movie is almost verbatim from the book, which is a very good thing. This book is timeless and can be read by any generation. Very few books can… show more.

While the connection between Ponyboy Curtis and Cherry Valance never goes beyond a simple crush on Ponyboy’s part, I would argue that their connection is memorable, unlikely, and life-changing. The fact that they even find each other and are able to talk as honestly as they do is surprising and heartwarming. In the end, they show each other that their social groups aren’t as different as the others might think—they all have problems and redeeming qualities. Cherry tells Ponyboy that not all Socs are like the ones who beat up Johnny. S.E. Hinton takes the romantic notion one step further… show more.

I was aware of gangs in schools close to where I lived while growing up.  When I read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, I was amazed how dangerous they were. Ponyboy, S. E. Hinton’s main character, is fourteen, and hardened by poverty after his parent’s death. He is being raised by his older brothers, Darry and Sodapop. They live in a poor neighborhood and are in a gang because the Socs, a ruthless gang of rich kids who live not too far from them, enjoy calling them greasers and beating them up. But when Ponyboy’s best friend, Johnny, kills… show more.

Confession, I saw the movie first. But I do recall the impact that reading the novel in the mid-eighties (yes, last century) had on me. The simplicity of the language gripped me mostly in how it evoked so much sentiment that resonated with me. That an eighteen-year-old author wrote the novel years before in the sixties blew me away also. I can’t recommend the novel based on the storyline alone (which I forget.)  But I can tell you that in searching for a copy at my library, I had to put a hold on a copy, and I wasn’t at… show more.

One could argue that S. E. Hinton, at seventeen years old, wrote the book that really created the genre we now know as YA. Her first-person narration through Ponyboy Curtis also began to bend the rigid gender roles many of us felt at the time, whether we knew it or not, coming out of the fifties. Many didn’t realize at first that Ponyboy, a fourteen-year-old greaser, was narrated through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl, and that perspective softened the then rigid lines of gender identity. When I used this book in the classroom (as I often did), it was… show more.

After I read The Outsiders for the first time when I was twelve, I fell in love with dark, gritty novels about teenagers dealing with hard issues and events in their lives. The Outsiders is told from the point of view of fourteen-year-old Ponyboy Curtis, an orphan living with his two older brothers in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma. All three are “greasers” who, along with their fellow greasers, regularly get into scrapes with a brutal gang known as the “Socs”—rich kids whose life mission is to pound any greaser they can find. Ponyboy is used to the drill of being jumped… show more.

The Outsiders was one of the first novels I read that made me want to be a writer. While this may seem like a classic “wrong side of the tracks,” story, it’s so much more. Brimming with heart, the novel follows teen Ponyboy Curtis, “an outsider,” who struggles with right and wrong—especially after his friend Johnny kills a “soc” (short for socials). While there’d been a long history of fighting between the greasers and the socs, the murder sparks a series of events that changes Ponyboy’s life forever. 

As soon as my children were old enough to appreciate it, I… show more.