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The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The world is always divided into two: the rich and the poor, light skin and dark skin, and the popular and the losers. For Ponyboy there are two people in the world, greasers and socs. Socs (short of social) are the popular, rich kids of the town that are able to pull of parties, and get arrested in one page of the newspaper, and gets awards on the other side. Greasers are the hood of the town, where Ponyboy lives with his two older brothers; Sodapop and Darry. The name comes their group all having long hair, sleeked back by grease. For Ponyboy his life was all about growing up, and avoiding the socs, who are out to get them
After Ponyboy’s parents died it has always been him, Soda, and Darry. Darry was the parent, working two jobs, never having fun, and putting on hold his life to make sure Ponyboy (the smartest of them) got into university. Soda who was dumb and hated school, so he dropped out and started working at the gas station, saving him money to help support Ponyboy. At age fourteen, having both of your brother’s give up their life for you is a huge role to fill for them. But Ponyboy is smart and is able to keep up his studies while hanging out with members of their gang. Ponyboy is close with Jonny, another “little brother” of their group who is shy and doesn’t say much. Yet Ponyboy image was distorted of Jonny when one night they got jumped by a group of socs (meaning attacked). In self-defense Jonny killed one of the socs who was going to kill Ponyboy. On the run for murder Jonny and Ponyboy leave everything they have
S.E. Hinton wrote this classic book almost thirty years ago. The story plot is amazing as I love the character names (Sodapop and Ponyboy) along with the interactions between each other (the brothers). The plot was fast, quick, and easy to read through, leaving no boarding parts. The writing is easy to understand and fun to read using the fun words like socs and greasers. I cried for Jonny, but glad that he and Ponyboy were thought as heroes. Status, money, fights, cops, fears, these things is all real to the greasers, the people who are on the outside, and are not looking in.
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Loved this classic tale!