preview

Essay About The Outsiders

Decent Essays

Most teens want to be able to fit into groups and form positive reputations whether it's being a part of the math group, popular group, drama group and more. In middle school and high school, it’s typical for teenagers to despise becoming an outsider in order to become “popular” and avoid having bad reputations. What teens don’t know though, is that one’s reputation can change, but not all teenagers long to fit in or become “popular.” The protagonist, Ponyboy Curtis, in the novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, sees being an outsider is a positive thing. Johnny Cade, Pony’s best friend, also attempts to manipulate his reputation in order to become his own person. S.E. Hinton gives a universal message of how the outsiders of the group can soon become heroes and always …show more content…

Ponyboy, being an outsider of the group isn’t like most teenagers who think they’ve got to be like everybody else. As Ponyboy walks home from the movie theater, he explains that his hair shows that he’s a part of the greasers. Although he dresses like a greaser, he’s the outsider of the group and he’s proud of his title. He explains: “Nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loaned it” (Hinton 10). Ponyboy knows that he’s different from the rest of the group; he loves movies and books, and he’s not afraid to show it. Some of the gang members do watch movies, but never “crack a book” (10) such as Soda Pop, Pony’s second oldest brother. He thinks that he’s the only one in the world that loves movies and books, but he’s wrong. The two people he discovers who is almost just like him are Johnny, and Cherry Valance, a soc. When Pony, Johnny, and Dallas Winston, the troublemaker of the group, go to the drive-in, they meet Cherry Valance. She might not have liked books and movies the way Pony did, but she was an outsider and tried to hide it, unlike Pony. As she talks to Pony she reveals

Get Access