Critical Essays Themes In The Outsiders

“What has stuck with me is the sadness…The Outsiders is one of those books that made people believe juvenile fiction, or what the publishing industry eventually rebranded as ‘young adult’ fiction, could go beyond dating and cutesy shit to address real issues with depth and nuance.” For Benincasa, Hinton’s work proved that teens are up for being challenged with writing about big issues, ones to do with gender, sexuality, and violence.“I’d like to go deeper next time,” Benincasa notes.“The teenage years are a bad time,” Hinton wrote in her op-ed. “Teenagers have that kind of freshness to the world,” Lonergan said in a recent New Yorker profile. And you are just like ‘You are never going to do that.

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One of the Socs was drowning Ponyboy in a fountain.

Johnny saw the danger Ponyboy was in and pulled out his switchblade. The boys did not know what to For instance, Ponyboy’s grades had dropped dramatically and he began to act more like a “tuff,” carefree, rebellious Greaser.

Instead of acknowledging the fact that his friend had passed away, he lied to himself about the situation.

In the text it stated, “I always have been kind of absent-minded, but man, then, I was lucky if I got home from school with the right notebooks and with both shoes on.” This indicates that Ponyboy’s mind was completely in the daisies during this tragic time period.

It’s the title of an entire album by Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit and a song by Run the Jewels.

Though the era of Socs and Greasers has long past, the adolescent dynamic Hinton picked up on remains, even though the name of the groups changes. Most of the literature handed down for high school students to read had, in Hinton’s estimation, nothing to do with the lived experiences of teenagers in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hinton published The Outsiders in 1967, a novel she began writing at age 15 and sold at 17, the idea of a teenager writing fiction for her peers was a novelty.“That’s a book that showed me it could be done.” Nick Greene, editor-at-large for Mental Floss was similarly impressed by Hinton’s tell-it-like-it-is approach.“What I remember affecting me most was that it was entertaining without trying to be entertaining,” Greene says.To sum up, once Johnny passed away Ponyboy completely dazed off at all times, which led to him doing poorly in school, making illogical decisions, and was dishonest to himself about Johnny’s death.In addition, Dally’s heart shattered into a million pieces when Johnny passed away.“The authors of books for teen-agers are still 15 years behind the times,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.“In the fiction they write, romance is still the most popular theme, with a horse-and-the-girl-who-loved-it coming in a close second.” Hinton’s novel, which describes in gritty detail the ongoing gang warfare between the lower-class Greasers and the well-to-do Socials, didn’t have much to do with romance or horses, unless you count her protagonist, the 14-year-old Greaser Ponyboy Curtis.There was a vibrant internal life to the book, which is that elusive quality that all good fiction has.” And it wasn’t just Hinton’s work that inspired writers, but her background. Hinton was only 15 when she started writing it, it totally changed my definition of what a writer was.“The Outsiders is the book that made me want to be a writer,” Greene continues. It wasn’t a job you had to apply for after checking off a list of appropriate credentials – it was just something you did because you wanted to do it.” Maybe the most abiding lesson that Hinton taught authors about writing for teenagers is that they didn’t need to water down their prose to relate to a younger audience.