Review of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Title: The Outsiders Author: S.E. Hinton Pages: 180 Publication Date: April 1967    Source: Purchased myself

Back Cover

Ponyboy can count on his brothers. And on his friends. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up "greasers" like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect--until the night someone takes things too far.

First Lines

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."

In a Sentence

The Outsiders was an extremely quick read with much more depth than I expected.

My Thoughts

I feel like just about the only person who can say this, but I never actually read The Outsiders in grade school or high school. I had a few friends who had read it, and I always meant to pick it up, but alas, The Outsiders remained one of those YA classics that just seemed to evade me until recently. While for the longest time I could rattle off a breakdown of the plot and the main characters because I had heard so much about the book, I'm fairly certain I never actually picked up the book itself until encountering it on the reading list for my Young Adult Literature class this semester. 

I'm sure a lot of you guys already know this, but S.E. Hinton first started writing The Outsiders when she was a teenager. It wasn't actually published until she was in college, but still...if I could have produced a book like this one at her age, I would probably consider my life pretty much complete. While there are a few aspects of the book that stood out to me as evidence of a young, inexperienced writer, Hinton shows a masterful handling of her characters, and that's what was most important to me. Furthermore, I think Hinton's age at the time enabled her to make Ponyboy Curtis such a great protagonist. If she had waited five or ten years to write the book, I'm not sure she would have been able to pull off the youthful hopefulness and almost (emphasis on almost) innocent-like qualities that he displayed. 

I also loved that The Outsiders wasn't just an adventure story about a group of underdogs. There's definitely some underlying depth to the book as well. The Outsiders addresses many issues that are especially relevant to teenagers, including just about everything from the crossing of social boundaries to the difficulties of living in atypical family situation. For anyone who's lived through high school and being a teenager, it's usually fairly easy to recall just how cruel people can be to others who are different from them. Just about every high school has their own set of cliques, and I liked how this book took that problem and examined the differences and similarities between what seems to be two drastically different groups. As the story went on, it became more and more obvious that the Greasers and the Socs weren't nearly as different as they thought themselves to be, which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"It seemed funny that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset."

While this is a truth that I have personally already discovered in my own life, I think it would have been one I would have deeply appreciated as a teenager, which is one of the reasons why I've grown to have quite a bit of respect for this book as a YA novel. 

Another thing I liked about the book was the inclusion of several well-integrated literary references. (And yes, I'm aware that I'm a total geek). From Gone with the Wind to poetry by Robert Frost, Hinton used Ponyboy's love of reading to support the important points she wanted to make in The Outsiders. Being a Robert Frost fan myself, having one of his poems contribute to the central theme of the book was a treat. And while we're on the subject, I can't help sharing another one of my favorite quotes from the book that ties into this theme:

"I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be."

For those of you who aren't familiar with Robert Frost, the passage above references his poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay," which the characters discuss at one point in the book. To me, this part of the book seemed to sum up an important part of growing up and how easy it can be to lose that exuberance and hopefulness that we have as kids. Dealing with incredible hardship on a daily basis, no matter what the source, can make a person cynical and jaded in such a short time, and I think it's important for us to be reminded that there are reasons to hope and things to look forward to in this world. Otherwise, it all just gets so tiring and discouraging.

The Outsiders is an extremely quick read that took me just over two hours to complete. Despite it's brief nature, I think it's well-worth a read for pretty much anybody. There's a reason why this book has remained one of the most popular YA reads for over forty years. If you end up hating the book, you've only wasted a small amount of your time, and if, like me, you find more than you bargained for, then you just might find that a tiny commitment can give out a big return. 

Links

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Find author S.E. Hinton online.

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