The Outsiders

For my second librarian recommended book I read "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. The book was recommended to me by Mrs. Costello at Eaton Rapids High School. The book follows the story of Ponyboy and his two brothers Darry and Sodapop. The boys live in Oklahoma and are in a gang known as the greasers. They are the lower class and dress like you stereotypical 50-60s bad boys with leather jackets and greased back hair (hence the name). The gang is always at war with the Socs, the upper class preppy gang of boys. The two gangs despise eachother and violence regularly breaks out. The book shows the struggles of the boys as they live in Darry's custody without their parents who were killed in a car accident. One night a fight breaks out and Ponyboy's friend Johnny ends up killing a Soc in order to save Ponyboy from being drown. The two boys flee town and hide. Later the boys come across a burning church with kids trapped inside. They manage to save all of the kids but Johnny is badly burned and breaks his back. After this incident the boys are seen as heroes. Eventually Johnny dies from his injuries and in a fit of rage another gang member, Dally, robs a grocery store before ultimately being killed by the police. To cope with his grief Ponyboy writes this book in remembrance to Dally. This book is a classic and I really enjoyed rereading it. I think reading it again for the first time after 7th grade, I really understood more of what was going on in the book. I enjoyed getting to relate the problems in the book to real world issues that I was had been unaware of before such as gang violence, social inequality, and how home situations can deeply affect a persons life. I feel that aside from these major issues the book is also full of small, easily relatable details such as friendship, unconditional love, guilt, and fear. I think all of these are things that anyone can relate to, to a certain extent. Overall I love this book and feel that I can very well relate to it and think that I enjoyed even more reading it a second time.