S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders and adolescent alienation in America

¶ … Outsiders

Main Characters

A Review of the Outsiders (1967) by S.E. Hinton

By any measure, adolescence can be a challenging time of life for anyone, but it was a particularly difficult period in the lives of the characters in S.E. Hinton's best-seller, the Outsiders. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this novel was written by the author when she was just 16 years old, and provides some fascinating first-hand insights into what took place during these turbulent years in America's history and in the lives of the "socs" and "greasers" who managed to live through them and come out in one piece on the other side. Although much has changed in the intervening years since the book was written, some things, most especially the manner in which young people tend to relate to each other, have not changed that much at all. To determine what critics and the author had to say about growing up during this period in American history, this paper provides a review of S.E. Hinton's the Outsiders, followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis

Background and Overview

When's. E. Hinton was 16 years old, man had not yet quite walked on the Moon but the nation had recently lost a popular president to an assassin's bullets in Dallas. The Vietnam War was just beginning to grind up America's youth in an increasingly bloody way that was being television in the nation's living rooms and hippies, pot and LSD were everywhere. The godless leadership of the Soviet Union was telling the world they intended to "bury" America and they meant it -- and after all, they were ahead in the space race and had plenty of nuclear weapons in their arsenal so this was a very real possibility. Indeed, Americans were building bomb shelters in their backyards left and right and the nation's schoolchildren were still being indoctrinated with Christian-only prayers in the schools and a duck-and-cover mentality complete with drills that assured them their desks were nuclear bomb-proof and they could actually hide from a thermonuclear explosion.

In addition, a real sense of "we" versus "them" was beginning to emerge on the nation's campuses and no one knew what the future would hold for them and even if there would be a future. It was in this environment that'd. E. Hinton wrote the Outsiders, a reflection of the increasing alienation that young people across the country were beginning to feel at the time. According to Whissen (1992), "By the mid-sixties, alienation had become a buzzword for the young and disaffected, the outcasts of the establishment, the misfits who were out of sync with a society that they felt was suffocating them. It was in 1967, the year that'd. E. Hinton's the Outsiders became such a success and went on to become a classic of teenage rebel literature" (p. 179).

The America of the sixties was a country that was in sharp contrast to the Red Scare era in the years that immediately followed World War II and the unruly behaviors described by Hinton were regarded just being as normal for teenagers at the time. For instance, Whissen adds that, "By the late sixties, rebellion had become institutionalized as an expected and accepted way of behavior among normal, healthy, restless youth" (p. 184). Although not all of the characters in the Outsiders were rebellious in flagrant ways, they were all faced with the same types of problems that all adolescents face during this period in their lives and the way they handled these issues forms the basis of the storyline which is discussed further below.

Summary of the Outsiders

A relatively short book, the Outsiders is narrated from the perspective of Ponyboy Curtis, the 14-year-old younger brother of Sodapop and Darrell who goes by "Darry," with whom he lives following the death of their parents in an automobile accident. The story is set in the Southwestern region of the country but remains unidentified. Ponyboy, together with his brothers, are so-called "Greasers," a group of socioeconomically handicapped teens and young adults who are known by this term because they grease their long hair and demonstrate their masculinity by acting "tough." In fact, all of the boys in the Outsiders (1967, p. 17) are described as being "tough as nails" (Bereska, 2003, p. 157), but this reference is not to be confused with "tuff," but both terms are regarded as high compliments in Ponyboy's neighborhood). The hoods and/or greasers with whom Ponyboy and his brothers are affiliated are pitted against a rival group of adolescent males from across the tracks on the good side of town who are known as the "Socs" (short for Sociables).

Not surprisingly, their rivals are comprised of affluent teens who sport Madras shirts and can afford to drive nice cars. The runt of the greaser gang is Johnny (aka Johnnycake), described by Whissen as "a pint-sized, dark, and brooding Greaser who still carries scars from a beating he suffered at the hands of the Socs. When a gang of Socs attacks the two boys, and their leader, Bob, tries to drown Ponyboy in a playground fountain, Johnny stabs Bob to save Ponyboy's life" (p. 185). When Ponyboy recovers enough from his near-drowning, Johnny tells him, "I killed him. I killed that boy. . . . I had to. They were drowning you, Pony. They might have killed you. And they had a blade . . . they were gonna beat me up" (pp. 64-65). It was later revealed that the soc, Bob, was drunk at the time and was "looking for a fight" after he dropped Cherry off (p. 115).

It is a sad reflection of their perception of their lot in life that the thought of calling the police and explaining what happened as being justifiable self-defense never occurred to these two young boys, but rather a fear of the police and being caught drives them to their next action. According to Whissen, when the soc attacker, Bob, dies, the two greasers engage in a Huck Finn-Tom Sawyer type of adventure: "Ponyboy and Johnny fulfill the teenage paranoid fantasy of being pursued, of running away, of having to survive as fugitives even though they are in the right" (p. 185). The two boys manage to catch a freight train for their getaway, much like Huck and Tom use the Mississippi River for theirs, and after they find an abandoned church where no one is around, they survive by eating baloney and entertain each other by reading a dog-eared copy, of all things, Gone With the Wind. This lifestyle quickly grew untenable though, and as Ponyboy observed, "By the fifth day I was so tired of baloney I nearly got sick every time I looked at it. We had eaten all our candy bars in the first two days. I was dying for a Pepsi" (p. 87).

After Dallas "Dally" Winston shows up at the church and assures them that "the fuzz won't be looking for you around here" (p. 88) with a letter from Sodapop, Johnny reaches an epiphany of sorts about the whole affair and determines that giving himself up to the law is the right thing to do ("I got a good chance of bein' let off easy" he tells Ponyboy and Dally while they are eating at a snackbar, p. 97), the abandoned church burns down and Johnny dies while trying to rescue some small children who were trapped inside. According to Ponyboy, Johnny, who had a hangdog look about him since his beating by the socs, was a different person during the rescue: "That was the only time I can think of when I saw him without that defeated, suspicious look in his eyes. He looked like he was having the time of his life" (p. 101). Ponyboy, too, was a hero in the children's rescue (the headlines about the rescue, for example, read "Juvenile Delinquents Turn Heroes," p. 115), but he did not see himself that way, of course and only when he was in the ambulance did he find out that that Dally had saved his life because his back was on fire (p. 102). Ponyboy recovers and while he is waiting in the hospital for word concerning Dally and Johnny's condition, his older brother Darry shows up and the two are reconciled.

Johnny's ultimately succumbs to the injuries he received in the church fire during the rescue efforts but before he does, Ponyboy visits him in the hospital for a final time, he says, "I'm pretty bad, ain't I, Pony? . . . I won't be able to walk again. I used to talk about killing myself . . . I don't want to die now. It ain't long enough. Sixteen years ain't long enough" (p. 129). Tragic stuff to be sure, but the tragedy was not over yet. After beating the socs in a revenge-match rumble, Dally dies by suicide-by-cop when he pulls a gun on the police and Ponyboy experiences the deaths of two people he had grown close to in just a matter of hours.

death conveniently resolves the problem of the murder of the Soc and is followed within hours as Whissen puts it, "Dally is made into a tragic antihero. He 'fought for Johnny,' and when Johnny dies, Dally, too, must die. And what he dies for is the absence of fairness in the world, for as all teenagers know, life is anything but fair. Again, though, where adults may guffaw at the sentimental silliness of Dally's way of death, Hinton makes it all quite credible -- even moving" (p. 185).

These events also serve as the basis for Ponyboy redeeming himself academically with his English teacher who cautions him that, "Pony, I'll give it to you straight. You're failing this class right now, but taking into consideration the circumstances, if you come up with a good semester theme, I'll pass you with a C. grade" (p. 178). After calling his English teacher late at night to determine how long the paper could be, Ponyboy begins to write about his friend, Johnny and how fate had placed him in the right place at the right time to die a hero, even though he was far too young when it happened. Ponyboy concludes the book by reciting from the beginning of his paper, "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 . . ." (p. 188).

Discussion

Although the story is set in the mid-20th century, Herz and Gallo (1996) suggest that the book has a timeless message and that young people "from any socioeconomic group can relate to Ponyboy and Sodapop in S.E. Hinton the Outsiders -- to their struggle to fit in, their feelings of alienation" (p. 20). These authors go on to note that Hinton's book "provides the reader with a view of characters struggling to understand a society interested in self-gratification, a society that exploits its less powerful members" (Herz & Gallo, 1996, p. 23). The author was just 16 years old when she wrote the Outsiders, but she managed to capture the perspectives of both the males and females of the same age and relates these differing viewpoints throughout the book. In this regard, Whissen notes that, "The story that Ponyboy tells is a boy's story, and boys continue to identify with its narrator and his buddies. But the story also holds a powerful fascination for girls who can wax ecstatic about the way this book is their voice" (p. 186). The fact that the author was an adolescent female was not publicized when the book was published since this would have likely adversely affected the appeal of the book for its original targeted audience of that consisted largely of similarly situated adolescent males who would undoubtedly be intrigued by the accounts of gang fights and troublemakers.

The book, though, has an enormous appeal for females as well. For instance, Whissen notes that Ponyboy performs a subtler function [for girls] for he allows them to indulge in subconscious erotic fantasies. Ponyboy's loving description of his brother, Soda, could be a junior high school girl's dream" (p. 188). Early in the book, Ponyboy enthuses about Sodapop and his relationship with him. Even though he says he lies to himself all of the time (but never believes himself) about his relationship with his oldest brother, Darry, his fondness and love for Sodapop is made abundantly clear: "I love Soda more than I've ever loved anyone, even Mom and Dad. He's always happy-go-lucky and grinning, while Darry's hard and firm and rarely grins at all" (p. 10).

When he meets Cherry Valence at a drive-in movie and she says he looks like Sodapop. Ponyboy is flattered to no end because he highly admires his older brother's looks:

Soda is handsomer than anyone else I know. Not like Darry -- Soda's movie-star kind of handsome, the kind that people stop on the street to watch go by. ... He has a finely drawn, sensitive face that somehow manages to be reckless and thoughtful at the same time. He's got dark-gold hair that he combs back -- long and silky and straight -- and in the summer the sun bleaches it to a shining wheat-gold. His eyes are dark brown-lively, dancing, recklessly laughing eyes that can be gentle and sympathetic one moment and blazing with anger the next. (p. 10)

This is not the only reference to his older brother's good looks. In fact, according to Whissen, "[Sodapop's'] good looks are mentioned repeatedly throughout the novel, and Ponyboy can only sleep well when he is literally sleeping in Soda's arms" (p. 188). In a vaguely disturbing scene that tends to detract from the story's credibility as being the work of a male author, Ponyboy observes that his brother "looked like some Greek god come to earth. I wondered how he could stand being so handsome" (p. 26).

These lapses, though, are reflective of the author's own life when the story was written. As Hinton points out on the book's back overleaf, "I wrote it at the right time of life. The feeling you have at sixteen you can't recapture. The Outsiders was totally honest. I was living that book." The author's faithful ability to convey what she was living during this period in America's history provides modern readers with a sense of what life was like then, of course, but there is in fact a timeless quality to the work as well that transcends a specific period in history. Indeed, Ponyboy Curtis is every boy just as Cherry Valence is every girl who is searching for an identity and their own unique place in the world.

Conclusion

The research showed that'd. E. Hinton's classic tale of adolescents coming of age told in the Outsiders remains as relevant today as it was when it was published almost 40 years ago. Although the author was a mere 16 years old when she penned the novel, any literary shortcomings in the book are far outweighed by its forthrightness and honest qualities. In fact, the book is highly readable and moves the reader along from event to event without significant breaks in the pace or action. The research also showed that although many things have changed in the American social landscape since this book was written, some others remain largely in place. Although the godless Russians are no longer are sworn enemies, new threats to America's security had arisen to take their place and many people are heard to yearn for the "good ol' days of communism" when these threats were from a known enemy in a geographic location where they could be targeted by a nuclear counterstrike if all else failed. In this regard, young American people growing up today are confronted with these same issues of not knowing what the future holds for them or for the world, just as they are searching for their own identities in a sea of possibilities and it is these enduring qualities that make the Outsiders as relevant today as in the turbulent sixties when it was written and published.