The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Spoiler: This book might induce excessive neural activity in light of what we consider a muddle in our soap bubble of egocentricity.

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the terrific writer fifty years too late. In my defense I was born in the 90's.

This novel which is set in the 1960's Okhlahoma analyses the rivalry between two gangs "Socs" and "greasers" representing the affluent urban rich cream and the dregs kids in the battered seams of the city respectively.

The book is written in a simple uncluttered vernacular of the region. The narrator of the story: Ponyboy Curtis is what you'd expect the love child of Charlie and Holden Cauffield if that were biologically possible. The narrator belongs to the "not-Hood" pack with his two sizzlingly delicious brothers who represent the two ideologies he'd like to emulate in his own life which is fairly common for orphaned children.

The plot revolves around Pony's struggle with his beliefs regarding the socially elite, people who get it 'easy' and his personal ineptitude to understand the ways of his 'uncultured' and socially inferior lifestyle. The confusion of adolescence, the inability to comprehend the viciousness of reality, the gnarling unfairness of societal norms and the struggle to conform to them nonetheless.

What hits you profoundly is the simplicity in the writing style, I dare you to take a break from this beautiful piece of the human experience. It's almost dreamlike to imagine the writer being a seventeen year old and writing in her knowing innocence the brutal truth of our existence through the medium of a brave yet tender boy, our ponyboy.

This book raises questions of Class disparity, class consciousness, sleazy police vigilance, teenage delinquency and all he other terms you are bound to find in a Sociology text book, all of which are as relevant as your own existence.

The real heartbreak happens when you read, "Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets an you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the sights you want to see."

The most memorable part of the book is when the three brothers race back home and the narrator thinks "We all three tied (in the race). No. I guess we just wanted to be together."

Obviously the most quoted line " stay gold ponyboy, Stay gold" will haunt you and move you to tears if you are a sap of my category.

I hope to find more stories like these and learn secondhandedly what it means to be vulnerably brave. These experiences seldom arrive and when they do, let them assault your mind and leave you changed; Another person.

Not my favorite book, as I guess there can't be one but I am still searching. Stay Gold.

View all my reviews