The Outsiders

1889 Words4 Pages

This book showed the struggle between rich and poor. The two main groups of the story were the Socs and the greasers. The Socs are in the upper class while the greasers are the poor ones that dislike the Socs because they have more money, better cars, and act like they are better than the greasers. The Outsiders is a good story by S.E. Hinton that shows the struggles of growing up Hinton did a fine job with the character development, the plot, and the theme with a few flaws. The Outsiders is a book that changed the style of young adult writers because it went off from the genre that young adult writer were using during that time period. The reader sees the everyday problems that teenagers were going through, “I can’t take much more Johnny spoke my own feelings I’ll kill myself or something” (Hinton 47). Johnny felt unloved because his parents treat him bad and say hurtful things to him, but when Johnny is with the gang he feels loved because they embrace him, and let him stay at their house if he cannot bear to go home to his parents. So many writers were use to telling fairy tells and fables, the realism of the outsiders made it the first of its kind during the time period it was written. Todd Howard points this out in his book Understanding The Outsiders, “ Thus the overwhelming commercial success that The Outsiders enjoyed among teens shortly after its first publication, it sent astonished publishers scurrying to find writers who could duplicate the novel’s formula and gave a pause to literary critics” (Howard 8). Authors in the early sixty’s never thought about writing a book showing the gang and social class differences, and this is why The Outsiders was a successful book because it opened people’s eyes to the problems some... ... middle of paper ... ...d in this quote, “The action of the story continues nearly nonstop pausing occasionally to look at the stars or talk about southern gentlemen but only for a short time before rushing ahead” (Daly 17). The action of the story can make the reader get bored of it quickly or it can continue to keep the reader interested. Some of the action was forced to keep the book going but overall it was not bad. Many young readers like reading a book with lots of action so this is why the book is such a big hit. Overall the book was high-quality book written by a seventeen year old to express the stupidity of gangs and social classes. Hinton may not have been the best writer because of her young age but she revolutionized the way book were wrote after The Outsiders. Hinton was effective in getting her points across through her characters, the plot, and the themes of the story.

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