Book Review: The Outsiders

The Outsiders from 16 year old S. E. Hinton is a multiple award winning story about class conflict and grids that lock some individuals into a position before they have even had a chance to decide for themselves who they are.

You might hear people refer to The Outsiders as the first YA book. Technically that is not true. Books for Young Adults carried younger characters, but the stories themselves were often read by adults. There have always been specific genres that were really for young adults, but were often labelled as Science Fiction and/or Fantasy. You might argue that Hinton has written the first YA book for modern day readers, who also want to see themselves portrayed in stories.

But this early work of Young Adult literature was different. It started a trend toward more realistic portrayals of teens, controversial issues, and banned books. Hinton has said that she wrote The Outsiders because she wanted to read about young people like herself, and the real problems that they encountered in their lives.

The characters in this story are divided up into the “socs” socially acceptable as the norm, and “greasers” which may have its roots in the epitaph “greasy immigrants. The two groups are always in conflict and their fights eventually cause the death of one of the gang members. The central character Ponyboy and his buddy find themselves running away from their world in order to escape a prison sentence or death.

The story from the perspective of the greasers gives some insight…