The Outsiders by Nick

I recently finished reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and really enjoyed it. The book came out in 1967 and was eventually turned into a film in 1983. The plot is based around two gangs. One gang is known as the "greasers" and their rival gang is the more wealthy "Socs" or Socials. The Outsiders mainly focuses on the stories of two teenage greasers named Ponyboy and Johnny, but includes a lot of other characters such as the hardened Dally and wisecracking Two-Bit, who appear often enough to be significant, but not enough to be considered main characters. These are my thoughts on the book:

Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers. Skip to the 5th paragraph to avoid plot spoilers.

The book starts with Ponyboy getting jumped by some Socs while leaving the movie theater. Ponyboy's two older brothers, Darry, Ponyboy's father figure, and Sodapop, one of Ponyboy's closest friends, and other greasers come to help him up. The next night Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dally are at the drive in theater. Dally begins to make rude comments around two Soc girls, Cherry and Marcia and after they get him to leave them alone Ponyboy and Johnny are able to talk with them and form a connection. Later that night, after walking with Cherry and Marcia to Two-Bits house, Ponyboy gets home and has a fight with Darry over how late he stayed out. Ponyboy runs away and finds Johnny at the park next to the corpse of one of the Soc girls' boyfriends who Johnny says he killed in self defense.

Now scared and desperate, Ponyboy and Johnny get a gun and money from Dally and hide out in a church for a week, cutting and dying their hair to disguise themselves. Dally informs Ponyboy about escalating tensions and Johnny decides he should turn himself in for killing Bob. The three are getting ready to leave when they realize that the abandoned church they were staying in has caught on fire with schoolchildren inside. Ponyboy and Johnny rush in to save the children and manage to get them out just before the building collapses, knocking out Ponyboy. Ponyboy and Dally have minor injuries, but Johnny has a broken back and is in Critical condition. The Newspapers proclaim Johnny and Ponyboy heroes, but are also charging Johnny for manslaughter because he killed Bob. Dally escapes from the hospital to watch a fight between the Greasers and the Socs that the Greasers win.

After the fight Johnny dies in the hospital and Dally gets gunned down for pointing a gun at the police. Overwhelmed from all of this information Ponyboy passes out and eventually wakes up at home. He is hostile and fights often with Darry. Sodapop convinces Ponyboy to stop fighting and Ponyboy starts to realize the value of his family and finds that he is now able to think about Johnny's and Dally's deaths without pain and denial. He decides to tell the story of him, Johnny, and Dally in a term paper for his English class that is revealed to be the novel itself.

I found the plot of The Outsiders very interesting and quite unique compared to most other novels I have read. The characters had a lot of personality and I found that while reading the book it is easy to form a connection with the characters as they are easy to relate to in certain aspects. The Outsiders did a great job of keeping me interested in the story and kept me wanting to read more constantly. The book is relatively short at only 192 pages and at some points I wished that it had been longer because I found the plot so interesting, but at the same time this book had a better, more complex plot in 192 pages than lots of books that I have read that have 400+ pages. I would recommend this book to all young adults as it has quite a unique genre that I think a wide range of people would enjoy. This is definitely a 10/10 book in my opinion.