Who Is S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders?

The Novel The Outsiders ,by S.E Hinton, follows the life of a family in the 1960s withered by death. The story follows a fourteen year old boy by the name of Ponyboy and his two brothers — Darrel (Darry), who is 20, and Sodapop, who is 16. Their parents have passed away in a car accident, leaving them to fend for themselves in the changing world around them. The boys are ‘Greasers’, a term that refers to young men from the poor East Side of town. The Greasers' rivals are the Socs, which is short for Socials, who are the "West-side rich kids."

The Outsiders has been labeled very appealing because it is written by a teenager about teenagers. The story is told in the first-person point of view, with the narrator being a 14-year-old boy named Ponyboy. This story depicts and deals with issues that are very close to the hearts of teens in the 1960s. There are no adult figures prominent throughout the novel, because during this age most parents weren't around; This novel is set in the 1960s

Cigarette smoking, like many serious health issues, is treated in the novel as part of everyday life. The Surgeon General's report of 1964 linking cigarette smoking to cancer had just been released and the details were not widely recognized, and understood. The author was aware that inevitably, some teenagers experiment with smoking. The importance, or lack of it, was highlighted when the main character, Ponyboy, who is only 14, is surprised when an adult tells him that he shouldn't be smoking. Suicide is another serious issue that is not glossed over in The Outsiders. One of the main characters had often contemplated suicide, and it was not until he is dying from other injuries that he regrets ever considering suicide as an option. Hinton tries to impress upon readers that teenagers may not have the perspective to understand that life is short enough already and they have so much to see and do in the