Changes In John Hinton's Novel 'The Outsiders'

In her book, The Outsiders, Hinton explores how people change over time. Discuss.

Throughout the timeless novel, The Outsiders, Hinton focuses on how people develop to maturity due to the responses they make when battling with hardship. The novel portrays the realistic life of two different types of teenagers and the experiences dealt in the process to demonstrate the transition between childhood to adulthood and the choice of responsibility that comes with it. Life in itself doesn’t stay constant; people keep changing, growing and developing into someone better or worse. Sometimes people judge too soon before putting themselves into someone else’s situation, therefore building up on misunderstandings. Hinton built the story conveying different types of change using events such as death including relationships, aspects and behaviours to transform the characters in the novel to stride to maturity.

Initially, Hinton introduced the Curtis brothers with some unstated conflict due to the tragedy of the sudden death of their parents affecting each of the relationship between them. The immediate transition of being an irresponsible,

As we are humans, we judge. Likewise in the novel, Hinton used Ponyboy’s perspective from the beginning to the end as to how he felt about them. However the way he thought about the characters in the novel changes as events such as losing a mate took over his life, which became an eye opener as he saw the real characteristics of the people he was surrounded by. ‘Things are rough all over’ can also used to states his realisation of his stupidity and selfishness and growth towards maturity. He found love in someone he never expected to find, a love for a friend, which led to the end of his life. Death helped him to see the transformation of a better life. Therefore, we can see, by losing someone in life aspects