The outsiders what do they think about you

She uses contrasting colors to not only give impressions, but also to add depth to the story. Teens are often quick to see only right or wrong in a situation. But nothing is ever that cut and dried. Using colors, Hinton allows the reader to visualize the extremes and then mix them together to show that there is a middle ground. This theme is not the most important element in the story, but it is a good literary technique that allows the reader to visualize the story and internalize the intensity of the feelings that run strong in adolescents.

The Outsiders can be termed a coming-of-age novel because of the many topics that the story deals with. Cigarette smoking, like many serious issues, is treated in the novel as part of everyday life.

Several reasons may explain the author's approach to smoking: The Surgeon General's report linking cigarette smoking to cancer had just come out in l and the implications were not widely realized; the author may have believed that, inevitably, some teenagers experiment with smoking; or perhaps cigarettes were just a prop to help readers better visualize the characters.

Whatever the reason, the treatment of the subject did not affect the telling of the story. The importance, or lack of it, was even underscored when the main character, Ponyboy, who is only 14, is surprised when an adult tells him that he shouldn't be smoking. Suicide, a hot topic among teens, is not glossed over.

One of the main characters had often considered suicide, and not until he is dying from other injuries does he regret considering that action. Hinton tries to impress upon readers that teenagers may not have the perspective to understand that life is short enough already and they have so much to see and do in the future.

Teen pregnancy receives attention in the book. The way Hinton handles teen pregnancy may seem outdated. When the girlfriend of one of Ponyboy's brothers becomes pregnant, she is immediately shipped off to live with family in Texas.

This consequence undoubtedly still happens today, but it is not the norm. With child-care centers in most large high schools, the social stigma attached to teen motherhood no longer exists as it did in the ls.

Underage drinking is common throughout the book. An author writing today might treat the issue of drinking and driving differently than Hinton did in the s. In this book, the teens who are drinking are often driving. One character, Cherry Valance, condemns adults and questions their motives when they sell alcohol to minors, but teen drinking isn't meant to be the focus of the book. The analysis will examine utterances and descriptions of physical, as well as mental emotional expressions.

Previous research on The Outsiders has mainly focused on class conflict. I will argue that The Outsiders can also be read as a discussion of the conflicting emotions and masculinity norms of the post-war era. Hinton is constantly drawing on, questioning, and transforming contemporary discourses at the intersections of masculinity, class, and age.

At the beginning of the story, Hinton introduces the narrator, Pony, by linking him successively with a certain set of emotions, primarily alienation, love, and fear. Suddenly, a red Corvair pulls up beside him and out come five hostile young men belonging to the Socs. These three feelings are prominent in the main body of the novel; they encourage action and push the narrative onwards. In this regard, the emotionality that shapes the greaser community, as well as the coolness of the Socs, is dependent on relations of power, which endow the members with meaning and value.

In other words, emotions secure the social hierarchy of the novel, mainly by attaching emotions to class. It is a surplus of emotion that separates the greaser community from the upper-middle-class youth, as well as driving the story line forward. During the s, a crisis of masculinity arose in the United States that affected both adults and teenagers, but in different ways.

Firstly, re-entry into civil society after the Second World War proved difficult for many men, who found it hard to live up to the image of being a hero. Secondly, modern corporate capitalism transformed the working conditions of American men by turning small entrepreneurs into hired employees.

As the idea of the self-made man had been important throughout United States history, its loss gave rise to a harsh critique , pp. The delinquent represents individual autonomy, power, and control. He provides American men with a negative stereotype against which to play out their yearnings , p. The emotional style of the Socs is related to those conflicting norms. It is a normative, and in some ways hegemonic, emotional state of mind, clearly designated for successful men and women Sterns, , p.

Neither style is depicted as an ideal. Instead, Hinton is playing with both stereotypes, infusing them with positively coded feelings and pointing out similarities rather than differences between delinquent and normative boys.

Hinton depicts him as an individual who expresses and performs emotions differently in different contexts cf. Rosenwein, , p. Darry is part of several communities with varying norms, namely the greasers, the Socs, and grown-up society. Being the oldest brother, Darry gave up school to support his younger siblings.

As Trites has pointed out, he therefore functions as a father figure for Pony Trites, , p. While Darry was still in school, he was popular and part of the Socs community. In the first half of the novel he expresses coolness in a comparable way. However, towards the end, he manifests himself as a greaser when he fights his old friends. One day, they find the church on fire with children trapped inside. They manage to rescue the children from the burning church, but Johnny ends up with severe burns.

He dies at the hospital and not long after another greaser, Dally, is killed by the police, leaving Pony heartbroken and emotionally confused. The description is similar to that of his brother, Soda, and other greaser friends. In particular, the emotional expression of Pony is breaking with stereotypical American masculinity norms. Pony is not cool, he is the opposite of the hegemonic emotional norm, where a man must always be in control of his emotions. Instead, his emotions are constantly gaining control over his thought processes.

I was half-scared of her. I could feel my palms getting clammy and the perspiration running down my back. The emotion is an overwhelming and bodily experience, which breaks with norms of manhood, as well as contravening the literary conventions of pre-war juvenile and pulp fiction.

It is typical of the extended emotional repertoire of post-war juvenile literature that the protagonist and hero of the story is genuinely afraid. According to Bettina Hitzer, readers began to encounter a multitude of narratives relating to fear during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Primarily, fear is no longer represented in opposition to courage; instead, the feeling is fashioned as a necessary step towards courage. Heroes, such as Pony, start to acknowledge their emotional vulnerability. The emotion has a heuristic capacity and connects humans rather than separating them from each other Hitzer, , pp. By the end of The Outsiders , the meaning of the emotive changes. The church where Pony and Johnny have been hiding is on fire and they can hear children yelling from inside.

There is no answer to the question, but the reader can understand that it has to do with courage. The comment shows that scared bodies do not have to be abject to the imagined community of heroes cf.

Ahmed, The Outsiders echoes passages from various narratives fiction and nonfiction about juvenile delinquency — cheap paperbacks, movies, investigations — and Pony refers to them several times Abate, , p.

However, apart from the lack of dirty language, drugs, and sex Abate, , p. Another thing that separates The Outsiders from paperback stories of juvenile delinquents is the representation of love. The feeling plays a vital part in the narrative, particularly in the description of the greaser community. In line with the new tendency, Hinton portrays the greaser community as highly affectionate. The emotional community of the greasers provides the boys with the tenderness missing from their relationships with their parents.

The community thus creates space for actions of love and vulnerability, as well as enabling the formation of a more sensitive masculine identity cf. Ahmed, , p. At the end of the previously mentioned conversation on the differences between the greasers and the Socs, Cherry suggests that Pony is different from other boys:. I pictured that, or tried to. Maybe Cherry stood still and watched the sun set while she was supposed to be taking the garbage out. Stood there and watched and forgot everything else […].

We saw the same sunset. The image of Cherry watching the sunset that Pony is visualizing is part of her past, or of her childhood. Maybe if we could lose our cool we could. The difference between the two worlds of the greasers and the Socs is related to class, age, and time.

Coolness is an inevitable part of growing up as a member of modern capitalist society. Another description of Pony watching the sunrise reinforces the connection between emotion and time. The setting is outside the abandoned church where Pony and Johnny hide after killing Bob.

Early one morning, on the steps at the back of the church, he and Johnny watch the sun rise:. The sky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The clouds changed from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It is noteworthy that the scene is set outside a church.

Different spaces are associated with and evoke different emotions and emotional expressions Pernau, , p. One day the other boys came along, misbehaved, and so embarrassed Ponyboy and Johnny that they never went to a sermon again.

This incident can be interpreted as a representation of the secularization of modern society. Tribunella, , p. The church has lost its social and cultural significance, and nothing is there to replace it, except maybe movies. Moreover, two symbolic events occur at the church. The one thing we were proud of. The act is emblematic and filled with meaning.

If they are caught, the judge will force them to get haircuts because it is the only thing that can be taken away from juvenile delinquents without assets. The cutting of the hair seems necessary in turning Johnny and Ponyboy into heroes. Nothing gold can stay. He act like your mother. With this statement Hinton is implying that the emotional style of the two teenagers could very well be a new ideal. In addition, their estrangement is distinct from the two contemporary stereotypical emotional communities described earlier, from the middle class ideal as well as from the juvenile delinquent.

Being the youngest characters of the story, the emotional style of Pony and Johnny could be interpreted as pointing towards the future.

Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. The passage has been widely discussed in previous research. One aspect of the text in particular points in that direction. The term thus denotes not only innocence and youth, but also the ability to feel, dream, hope; in other words, to watch sunrises. The notion of childhood is central to the hippie attitude as it relishes a state of wonder and simplicity; a state of mind that since the Romantic movement has also been framed as childlike Buckingham, , p.

In earlier times, the relationship between youth and adult was founded on an idea of adjustment. In , to give a foundational example, influential developmental psychologist G. Stanley Hall stated that society is founded on a generational conflict, where the younger generation must adjust to the older one. However, after the Second World War, new views on teenagers were being launched. Influential developmental psychologist Erik Erikson presented a contradictory perspective:.

It is the young who, by their responses and actions, tell the old whether life as represented by the old and as presented to the young has meaning; and it is the young who carry in them the power to confirm those who confirm them and, joining the issues, to renew and to regenerate, or to reform and to rebel. Either way, the relationship between the younger and older generation has clearly changed. In The Outsiders , the closest thing to a generation gap lies in the relationship between Pony and his older brother Darry.

I thought of those hard, pale eyes. Not until the end of the novel does Pony understand that his brother does indeed love him. From the perspective of emotions, however, this statement is only partly true. Trites overlooks the fact that Darry also changes throughout the narrative. He is also unexpectedly emotional:.

Suddenly I realized, horrified, that Darry was crying. Darry did care about me, maybe as much as he cared about Soda, and because he cared he was trying too hard to make something of me. He was seventeen or so, but he was already old. With characters such as Randy and Darry, Hinton is trying to bridge the gap between generations by showing the reader how to understand the older generation and their expression of love — an attentive reader will probably understand what Soda, Dally, and Two-Bit are talking about long before Pony does.

However, the emotional style of Pony is the ideal of the novel and Darry therefore has to rediscover his vulnerability, in other words, return to gold. The changing politics of emotion that Hinton thematizes is connected to the development of a modern Young Adult literature.

The emotionality of the greaser community, as well as the exhortation to watch sunsets and stay gold, are part of a literary strategy. The world is changing, yet the authors of books for teenagers are still 15 years behind the times. In short, where is the reality? His observation points up the disproportionate level of sacrifice the greasers make to live in comparison to the Socs, who have the luxury of terrorizing greasers for sport.

Ponyboy lashes out at Cherry when she refuses to visit Johnny in the hospital, as Johnny killed her Soc boyfriend. In his bitterness, Pony repudiates her attempts to help the greasers as charity meant to make her feel good about herself. Even though Cherry and Ponyboy are trying to forge a real friendship, money—at least to Ponyboy—divides them.

On the way to the rumble, the greasers walk excitedly and get hyped up to fight. Steve Randall, one of the more intelligent and sharp-minded greasers, mimics the way greasers are looked at by others. He sings the terms people use to describe greasers, and by mocking these terms, Steve creates space between the greasers and social opinion. Sobered and made wiser by his experience, Ponyboy reflects upon his situation and the drama that has just indelibly altered his life.

Ponyboy understands that the problems that drove him and the other characters to murder are much larger than themselves, and he wants to save others from the same fate. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Outsiders!