The Outsiders Essay

The Outsiders Essay

The novel The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton is set in 1965 about a 14 year old boy Ponyboy and his struggles with right and wrong in society. Ponyboy is a member of the greasers, a gang of poor East Side kids in Tulsa, along with his two brothers, Darry and Sodapop, and his friends, Johnny, Darry, Two-Bit Mathews and Steve. The greasers rivals are the Socs, they are the "West-side rich kids". Ponyboy, Darry and Sodapop's parents recently died in an automobile accident and Darry, the oldest brother was given custody of Ponyboy and Sodapop. In The Outsiders the two gangs, Socs and greasers are used to show that it is hard to understand other people's lives and that people can end up believing all the stereotypical thoughts on them. Both the Socs and greasers make assumptions about one another and don’t actually know the true problems that they face in their lives.

 In The Outsiders the Socs judge the greasers by the way they look and all the stereotypes on them. When Dally, Johnny and Ponyboy were all at the drive in, Cherry remarked that she's "heard about Dallas Winston, and he looked as hard as nails and twice as tough." (page 24). Cherry was judging Dally on the way he looked and what she had heard about him. She judged him before she had gotten a chance to actually see what he was like, even though what people said might be true. She didn’t know what he had gone through in his life and the reasons behind all the bad things he did. "It’s like the term 'greasers', which is used to class all us boys on the East Side. We're poorer than the Socs and the middle class. I reckon we're wilder, too." (Page 8). The Socs class the poorer people into a group they call, greasers. They don’t usually socialise with each other and they judge them by the amount of money they have, or the length of hair they have. They have two very separate communities. Most Socs believe that all greasers are dirty, wild, reckless and that they won't have a good future. The Socs judge the greasers by the stereotypes that are made about them and they have very separate communities that don’t understand one another.

Not only is it the Socs that judge greasers by the way they look and amount of money they have, but the greasers do the same about the Socs.  "We get jumped by Socs… It’s the abbreviation for Socials, the jet set, the West-side rich kids." (Page 3). The greasers think that the Socs are just the rich kids that have everything they want. They think that everything is easy for them and that people treat them better. The greasers haven't stopped to actually find out what their lives are actually like or that maybe they have harder lives then what they think. "I really couldn’t see what Socs would have to sweat about - good grades, good cars, good girls, madras and mustangs and Corvairs, man, I thought, if I had worries like that I'd be considered lucky. (Page 31). When Pony and Johnny were with Cherry and Marcia, he was thinking that Socs couldn’t have anything to worry about in their lives. He thinks that they have a really easy life that is basically handed to them and that they will be able to do anything when they are older and not be stuck. He hasn’t accounted for the fact that they might be having quite a hard life and that living up to the 'Socs' label could be harder than it looks like. Greasers make just as many assumptions about the Socs as they do about greasers. They are thought of as the 'rich kids' that have a simple life.