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Amanda GreenMs. Charla HughesENC1145-277th of March, 2013The Outsiders: Teenagers, Teenagers and a Teenager.At sixteen years old, most teenagers are stressed about essays and drivers licenses, but not Susan Eloise Hinton. When she was sixteen years old, she was trying to understand her life experiences and used writing as a coping method. By her freshman year of college, she had a publishing deal and that was how The Outsiders came to be in 1967. As soon as the book was published, it became a hit because it was a book “for teenagers, about teenagers, written by a teenager” (The New York Times). Unlike other books that shocked audiences of its time, The Outsiders was not meant to have an adult audience; it was actually intended to be read by teenagers. It did, however, shock some adult readers due to, “its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and “rumbling”” (The New York Times). Books like The Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm were meant for adult audiences and over time turned into young adult reading. The life lessons in The Outsiders were geared so heavily towards teenagers, it had no choice but to be for teens. Her extremely young age during the conception of The Outsiders was a memorable aspect of the novel’s history. However, it was the moral and emotional lessons of teen bullying, social intolerance and the necessity for equality that are learned in The Outsiders that make it such an incredible book.It is likely that because she was a teenager when she wrote the book, Hinton did not underestimate her readers and knew they would likely be teenagers (like herself) wanting to read something like The Outsiders. According to LitCharts, Hinton wrote?The Outsiders?in part because she wanted to read a book like it. She felt that the fiction available to teenagers at the time did not depict the adolescent experience in a realistic way. She wanted to write about the experiences of herself and her peers in school, so that others would be aware of some of the real problems facing teenagers in her day.Some of those problems were teen bullying. Whether or not Hinton intended, The Outsiders?has become a looking glass into the 40’s and six decades later it is still a beloved book amongst young teenagers. “Long credited with changing the way Y.A. fiction is written, Hinton’s novel changed the way teenagers read as well, empowering a generation to demand stories that reflected their realities.” (The New York Times)However, Hinton’s tale of violence and hatred has proven to be a social mistake repeated consistently by the teens of every decade and her insight into teen bullying has maintained its relevance today.The lesson most learned from this novel by teenagers would be the following lesson: unless there is change in their ways and hearts, young people are doomed to repeat negative behavior towards groups unlike themselves because of their own ignorance and intolerance. Those two short-comings never end well for anyone... An example of someone’s life being altered because of intolerance is how Ponyboy has to run away because some Socs attacking him and his friend Johnny and Johnny accidentally killing one. During this series of unfortunate events, Ponyboy and Johnny end up in the hospital because they tried to save some children from a burning church.?The burning church collapses and in the end Johnny’s wounds prove to be too much and he passes away in the hospital. He was too young to die. He should not have been away from his neighborhood and home in the first place. It’s tragedies like these that Hinton wanted to bring attention to. Adults also need to learn to recognize the seriousness of the actions of bullying by teenagers. Whether it is cyber-bullying or rumbles in the park, hatred hurts.Hinton’s message still rings true today. No matter what walk of life people are from, everyone has a brain, heart, and soul. The Outsiders and many other stories are woven around the moral that everyone should be treated equally. Going back centuries, this moral was used by Shakespeare himself who instilled a need for equality in his character Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. Shylock says, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III.I.39-42) It is this same circle of revenge that devastates young people. The rumble at the end of The Outsiders is the final revenge for both sides of town. For the Greasers, they are avenging Johnny and the sad life he lived with an even sadder demise because of the Socs. The Socs felt the need to avenge Bob, their charismatic leader with a home life that was sad in a different way than Johnny’s, but sad nonetheless. Right after the rumble, Dally and Ponyboy run to the hospital to tell Johnny that they won the fight and Ponyboy learns that win or lose, they still lose. Right then Johnny dies and Dally loses it, resulting in suicide by police officer. A sadder story couldn’t be told of the dead ends faced by teenagers.The Greasers and the Socs may have different troubles, but they still have them. Unfortunately, their troubles didn’t bring them together. They hated each other and couldn’t see the other side’s point of view. Cherry (Bob’s girlfriend) knows that the fights between the Greasers and Socs will never subside and all she can do is try to make the fights fair. That is not enough for Ponyboy. He yells at Cherry, “Don’t you ever feel sorry for us. Don’t you ever try to give us handouts and then feel high and mighty about it,” (Hinton 129). Ponyboy was right, her efforts weren’t enough. Ponyboy felt Cherry’s attempt at helping was misinterpreted by his friends as pretending to care, when it was actually pity. Ponyboy does not quite see Cherry’s perspective till she helps him realize things are rough all over. “I wasn’t trying to give you charity, Ponyboy. I only wanted to help… Wouldn’t you try to help me if you could?” (Hinton 129). Even though she’s from a rich neighborhood, she still have problems. Ponyboy finally realizes and shows his realization to Cherry by pointing out that you can see sunsets just as well on the East-Side of town as you can the West-Side. Even when it feels like there’s nothing, there’s still the sunset to gaze up at. Ponyboy and Cherry’s friendship is proof of small miracles like sunsets.Cherry, like Ponyboy, is a character to fall in love with. Cherry has three memorable lines from the novel (including the sunset one previously mentioned). She is quoted saying she would but shouldn’t fall in love with Dally. It is by far the most difficult quote to understand as a middle school student and most relatable quote for a high school student. She says to Ponyboy before getting in the car with her boyfriend, “I could fall in love with Dallas Winston, I hope I never see him again, or I will” (Hinton 46). Dallas Winston is a mean guy who is rough around the edges and has served time. As readers get older and read more and have more life experiences, they begin to understand what Cherry means by falling for a guy who would not be good to her or for her. Falling for guys one shouldn’t is something most girls start doing by high school and by then it is understood what Cherry means. That quote and how introspectively thought-provoking it is should be enough to make young women want to re-read The Outsiders later on in life. Cherry’s perspective and attitude are great for young women to be reading about. Diane Lane was cast as Cherry in the movie The Outsiders and did a great job portraying the anxiety Cherry went through to try and stay true to both groups of boys.The lessons of “rough all over” and we should all be treated equally were projected well with the movie The Outsiders. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983, The Outsiders starred a talented cast of Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, and Matt Dillon. The movie adaptation was received well by adults and teenagers alike. The actors were cast really well and the plot never strayed in the movie compared to the book. Some critics were not so impressed by the magic that was The Outsiders via film. “Francis Ford Coppola's cheesy, overblown adaptation of S.E. Hinton's wonderful novel captures none of the book's gritty magic.” (Rotten Tomatoes critic Gabe Leibowitz). While others acknowledged the movies downsides, they felt it deserved praise nonetheless. Another Rotten Tomatoes critic saw the need for that praise, “Flawed though it might be, it's still an exciting piece of film made by an innovative director who was firing on all cylinders.” (Rotten Tomatoes critic Lewis Beale). From an audience only perspective, The Outsiders was loved by 81% of viewers on Rotten Tomatoes. That is an exceptionally high rating for a movie based off of a book. Readers are hard to please when it comes to recreating a book that has already been fantasized and choreographed within their own imaginations. Overall, The Outsiders the movie pleased four out of five viewers and that is definitely considered a success.Many students are reading The Outsiders when they are in middle school, which is a great time to read it for the first time. However, rereading it at the end of high school when readers are closer to Dally and Darry’s age rather than Ponyboy makes one heck of a difference in how the story is received. As teen readers get older, they connect a little differently with each character in the book, and the range in ages makes it a good read for someone in any stage of their teens. At first, readers connect with Ponyboy, then Johnny, then Sodapop, then Darry and Dally. At Ponyboy’s age, things are cut and dry. His moral compass is black and white and for him, poor behavior was not easily justifiable. Cherry should have done more to help them; Socs have it easy and hate us for no reason; Dallas is a bad guy. But, Johnny sees that Dallas is just troubled and that Cherry really is a sweet girl who tried her best to make him comfortable.There’s only a two year difference between Ponyboy and Johnny but the acceptance that Johnny has for other people despite his abusive upbringing shows his maturity while Ponyboy can’t see past what would improve people. Their differences could also symbolize the staggering increase in maturity from kids in their junior year compared to their freshman year. Once the reader is Darry and Dally’s age they can see how being from that neighborhood leaves you with two choices: repeat the cycle of poverty and start taking care of more kids, or self-destruct. Poverty was prevalent back then and is unfortunately, still affecting children and families today. In 2010, 22% of children under the age of eighteen years old were living in poverty (National Poverty Center). When this book was written, in 1967, poverty was so severe that the government was stepping in to try and decrease the number of children coming to school hungry every day. 2010 had the highest percentage of childhood poverty since then and the government is still working at feeding children during school hours. It was the first year since 1967 that childhood poverty rates rose to 22%... again. Today, almost one out of four children know what it’s like to live in poverty. For such a developed country, our poverty rates are ridiculously high. This misfortune makes the story and heart ache of young, impoverished boys with nowhere to go even more relatable. These relatable topics are one of the many reasons that The Outsiders has survived the ages. Eric Tribunella proposes that another reason The Outsiders has dominated the last five decades is the quantity of copies sold because of the backing of The Outsiders by school systems after it graduated from the “banned books stage”:Despite the novel’s audience and purpose and its potentially provocative acknowledgment of the problems of social class, The Outsiders was readily institutionalized as part of school reading lists and educational curricula throughout the United States. Its institutionalization can be accounted for in part by the way it offers a palliative to the problems it depicts. (Institutionalizing The Outsiders)Middle schools (grades 6-8) across the nation were adopting The Outsiders by the 90’s as a part of their curriculums because of the lessons it taught. Tribunella goes on to explain why the novel went from “banned book” to acceptable in school literature.The protagonist, Ponyboy, represents the novel itself as an intervention into those problems, but it works to reaf?rm a notion of rugged individualism and a faith in American education. Such lessons ultimately disarm the novel’s class critique and render it safe for educational institutions. (Institutionalizing The Outsiders)Tribunella was right in saying the lessons were what helped The Outsiders become acceptable for educational institutions. The lessons of flawed social justice, two wrongs don’t make a right, and hatred is never acceptable are lessons that need to be taught to children of all ages and middle schools are a great place to start.From 1967 till now, the audience and message haven’t changed. Teen-bullying is not okay. Discrimination and ignorance only lead to more crime and hatred. Too many kids feel like they have nowhere to go. But, the majority of the audience is definitely teenagers and the consistency in the book’s popularity speaks highly of the then quite young Hinton. Maybe one day the sport of crude humor and blind hatred will die out and bullying will be put to rest. Until then, The Outsiders, morals still ring true, the audience is still young adults, and the author (while a bit older now) is still writing young adult novels. The Outsiders has remained one of the most highly praised books for young adults for nearly half a century and luckily, there is no foreseeable end to its success.Works Cited BIBLIOGRAPHY Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2003.National Poverty Center. 2010. 1st March 3013.Peck, Dale. "'The Outsiders': 40 Years Later." The New York Times (2007)."The Outsiders by Rotten Tomatoes." n.d. Rotten Tomatoes. February 2013."The Outsiders: Background Info." n.d. LitCharts. February 2013.Tribunella, Eric. ""Institutionalizing The Outsiders: YA Literature, Social Class, And The American Faith In Education."." Children's Literature in Education. 2007. 87-101.William Shakespeare Info. n.d. February 2013.Young, Roberta C. "A Novel Rule." The English Journal. National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 45. ................
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