The Outsiders Analysis Essay

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The Outsiders Whenever I read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, I compare how intertwined this novel is with the real world, regardless of being written in the 1960’s. It beautifully represents the reality of what every society in the world today must confront, which is gangs. Choose any area in the world and you will always find one universal attribute that gangs will possess, and that is blind and meaningless conflict. The way society looks down upon the lower class results in the formation of gangs and their struggle for power and opportunity. Even from all the pressure of being in a gang, there always seems to be a small percentage of individuals who see through the violence and recognize that the fighting and morals of a gang are wrong.…show more content…
The way the Socs and Greasers recognized each other is closely similar of the way gangs do it in modern day, usually by clothing and symbols. Most of the gangs of today do not even know why they are fighting. They are simply told to stand up for one another and to jump or kill rival gang members. This is exactly what Hinton displayed between the Socs and the Greasers. The never ending cycle of the “we got each other’s back” code leads to the tension between the two groups. Whenever a Soc or a Greaser saw a member of the opposing group, they instantly resorted to physically harming him. Gangs today do that as well. If a group of Crips see a Blood all by himself, most likeley they are going to go confront him. Hinton wanted to portray how people in gangs don’t hate each other, but in reality they just don’t know each other. They simply just follow the implied morals and rules of their respective gangs to avoid rejection. Hinton proves this when Ponyboy, a Greaser, and Cherry, a Soc, become very interested in each other and find out they have a lot in common. This sense of understanding for one another led them to disregard the fact that they were in opposing
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