book review about the outsiders

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The outsiders, common sense media reviewers.

Story of ostracized kid a timeless fave of teens, preteens.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Ponyboy is tough but loves literature. He reads Go

True friendship is golden, even an outsider can fi

Ponyboy's gang, the Greasers, routinely engages in

A rumble between gangs is vividly described, but i

A few casual references to sex.

Some members of the Socs show up drunk.

Parents need to know that this story of peer pressure, rebellion, and identity centers on two rival groups of teens, the lower-class "outsider" Greasers and the more well-heeled, popular Socs (short for Socials). It includes fighting, underage drinking, delinquent behavior, a rumble, a fatal stabbing, and a suicide…

Educational Value

Ponyboy is tough but loves literature. He reads Gone With the Wind to Johnny and recites the poem "Nothing Can Stay" by Robert Frost when they are hiding out, which may inspire readers to check out these works. This aspect of Ponyboy's character conveys a message that reading is cool.

Positive Messages

True friendship is golden, even an outsider can find his way, redemption and forgiveness are possible. Reading books and poetry is cool.

Positive Role Models

Ponyboy's gang, the Greasers, routinely engages in petty crime, although he avoids that behavior. He is loyal to his friends, a savior to some kids in danger, and is open-minded enough to see through Cherry that not all Socs are alike. He is also a great reader, and not afraid to show it.

Violence & Scariness

A rumble between gangs is vividly described, but is mild compared with the gore teens encounter in media today. Ponyboy's brother, Dally, hits him when he comes home late. One of the main characters accidentally kills a rival in an attempt to save his friend. A dangerous fire breaks out and a main character is seriously injured.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this story of peer pressure, rebellion, and identity centers on two rival groups of teens, the lower-class "outsider" Greasers and the more well-heeled, popular Socs (short for Socials). It includes fighting, underage drinking, delinquent behavior, a rumble, a fatal stabbing, and a suicide. But the indelible characters and compelling story have consistently hooked middle school kids, teens, and reluctant readers since The Outsiders was first published in 1967. This book appeals to preteens (many read it in sixth grade) because that's the time when kids break into social cliques and life becomes tribal. The feelings of being ostracized are timeless -- which is why this book is still so relevant more than 40 years after its original publication. Kids may also want to check out Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film version .

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (33)
• Kids say (293)

Based on 33 parent reviews

A Good Book, but a Bit Dated

What's the story.

THE OUTSIDERS has been one of the most popular book among teens and preteens since it came out in 1967. Ponyboy and his Greaser gang fight rival gang the Socs (short for "Socials," the wealthier, more preppie kids) and try to make a place for themselves in the world. The juvenile delinquent characters are fully and humanely developed in this realistic look at life, death, and growing up, told from a teen's point of view. The book was based on the author's high school experience in Tulsa, OK, in 1965, but the time and setting are not specified in the text.

Is It Any Good?

In the battle to get teens to read, The Outsiders is a nuclear missile. Any literary missteps -- like some too-easy plot resolutions -- are overcome by the power of author S.E. Hinton's honest teen point of view (she wrote it at age 16), which rings so true to young readers.

Many teens say this is the first book they ever enjoyed reading, even though it's often required in school. Hinton's insight into teen angst may explain why adolescents identify with Ponyboy so strongly. Readers find plenty of action and an idyllic view of friendship, a major concern for teens. Teenagers love this book; it teaches them that they can enjoy reading, as Ponyboy already knows.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why this book resonates with preteens and teens. Why has it remained so popular for more than 40 years?

What do you think happens to Ponyboy after the end of the novel?

If you've seen Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 movie based on the book, which do you like better, and why?

Why do you think The Outsiders is often required reading in school?

Book Details

• Author : S. E. Hinton
• Genre : Coming of Age
• Topics : Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Friendship , High School
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Penguin Group
• Publication date : April 24, 1967
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 12 - 14
• Number of pages : 156
• Last updated : July 20, 2018

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PG-13: Risky Reads

Rich kids, greasers and the life-changing power of 'the outsiders'.

Ally Carter

The Outsiders

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Ally Carter is the author of the Gallagher Girls series and Heist Society .

Teenage girls read in packs. It's true today, and it was true when I was a teen growing up in a small town in northeast Oklahoma. Battered paperback copies swept through our ranks like wildfire, but the one I will never forget is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

One by one, each of my friends became obsessed with the story of a group of boys from the wrong side of the tracks in Tulsa, a city that was just 60 miles away but might as well have been on the other side of the world from the rural Oklahoma that we knew so well.

Of course, now I know that The Outsiders is an American classic, that millions of teens have been devouring it for decades, but at the time it felt like we had discovered it — that it was our book. A secret. I was one of the more reluctant readers of my group of friends, but there was something about this book that made me both sad it was over and eager to read it again. And yet the true impact The Outsiders had on my life had very little to do with those conversations with my friends. Instead, it came from an offhand comment from my father.

"You know she's from Tulsa, don't you?" he asked one day when it was my turn to drag that paperback copy home.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but at the time I hadn't realized that S.E. was a woman. And I had never dreamed that she was actually from Tulsa — just an hour's drive away. And when I found out that she'd been a teenager when she wrote this book that my friends and I loved so much, something inside me clicked. A light went on, and from that point on, I couldn't get enough.

Over the next few weeks, I read more of her books. I devoured That Was Then, This Is No w. I made my parents buy me a Siamese fighting fish when I finished Rumble Fish .

Ally Carter is also the author of the upcoming book Perfect Scoundrels. Shevaun Williams hide caption

But the bigger impact lasted far after my pack moved on to other fare.

My father's words stayed with me

S.E. Hinton was a girl about my age. She was from my state. And she had created this story — pulled it out of thin air and made it come alive.

It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw The Outsiders , I knew better. It was the first time I'd realized that real people write books. Not only that — I realized that real people who were like me wrote books.

And if she could do that, I could do that.

And that made all the difference.

PG-13 is produced and edited by the team at NPR Books.

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Book Review For Teens: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

S.E. Hinton’s classic coming of age novel is just as relevant to this ninth-grader today as it was when his mom read it in high school.

PARENT REVIEW |  Kristin O’Keefe

I was a little hesitant to reread S.E. Hinton’s  The Outsiders , a book I first discovered and loved as a teenager myself. What if it didn’t hold up?

Thankfully, aside from some dated slang words, the novel still rings as true today as when Hinton wrote it in 1967. Our narrator/hero is Ponyboy, the youngest in his gang of Greasers. The gang includes his brothers Darry and Soda, as well as Steve, Two-Bit, Dally, and Johnny.

The gang’s rivals are the Socs, short for “Socials.” Ponyboy notes their power: “You can’t win against them no matter how hard you try, because they’ve got all the breaks and even whipping them isn’t going to change that fact.” The Socs have their own problems, though—Cherry Valance admits her group can be “cool to the point of not feeling anything, always searching for something to satisfy us and never finding it.”

Many of the characters in this book exhibit a restlessness, a sense that they’re going to explode if something doesn’t happen. There is a confrontation, and things take an unexpected turn.

S.E. Hinton helps readers see beyond the Greasers’ hair and lifestyles and understand that decency is not the purview of one particular class.

Rather, decency and kindness lie with people who make the choice to do the right thing.

I was also struck by how much the 17-year-old author understood the importance of family. The saddest character is the one whose parents don’t seem to care or know he exists. In contrast, Ponyboy comes to realize that his oldest brother Darry’s strictness is an outgrowth of his worry and love for his sibling.

Hinton said she wrote  The Outsiders  because she wanted something realistic to be written about teenagers, not just another prom or horse story. Hopefully her success inspires other teenagers to look for stories that feel real to them—and if they can’t find those stories, maybe write their own.

Kristin O’Keefe’s work has appeared in Your Teen, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Grown and Flown, and Scary Mommy. She’s currently at work on her first novel; you can also find her on Twitter @_KristinOKeefe and Facebook at Kristin O’Keefe, writer. 

TEEN REVIEW | Charlie O’Keefe

The Outsiders  by S.E. Hinton is definitely one of my favorite books. It’s pretty short, so it’s a quick read, but it packs a lot in. I first read it in seventh grade and have read it two more times since then.

The book is about a group of lower-class boys called “Greasers” who are constantly being mistreated and abused by a group of upper-class boys, who are known as the “Socs.” A violent rivalry results in constant fighting, and the Greaser Johnny is forced to kill a Soc to save fellow Greaser Ponyboy’s life. From that point on, the book is about the two friends running away as fugitives and the aftermath that follows.

I think it’s interesting how the book portrays different classes of society and the conflict between them. Also, I liked the smaller theme of “everybody’s got something.” Regardless of social class, nobody’s perfect and you never know what‘s going on in someone else’s life, like when Cherry, the leader of the female Socs, tells Ponyboy that the Socs have their problems, too. I also love the theme of family, and seeing Ponyboy’s relationships with his brothers change throughout the book. He was different from his brothers, and towards the end of the book the oldest brother, Darry, started to accept that.

Overall, T he Outsiders  is a great book that’s definitely worth reading. There’s some violence and death, but you really feel like you know the characters—and for a short book, it has a lot going on.

I still can’t believe S.E. Hinton wrote this in high school.

Charlie O’Keefe is in ninth grade at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland. 

Kristin O’Keefe is a freelance writer who is also working on a satirical novel about a modern day fairy godmother. Kristin has written for  The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Grown and Flown  and  Scary Mommy.  Find her on Twitter @_KristinOKeefe and Facebook at Kristin O’Keefe, writer. 

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‘The Outsiders’: 40 Years Later

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By Dale Peck

• Sept. 23, 2007

Few books come steeped in an aura as rich as S. E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. At a time when the average young-adult novel was, in Hinton’s characterization, “Mary Jane went to the prom,” “The Outsiders” shocked readers with its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and “rumbling.” Although other pop culture offerings had dealt with these themes — most notably “Rebel Without a Cause” and “West Side Story” — their intended audience was adult. By contrast, “The Outsiders” was a story “for teenagers, about teenagers, written by a teenager.” Hinton’s candid, canny appraisal of the conflict between Socs, or Socials, and Greasers (for which one might substitute Jets and Sharks), published when she was 17, was an immediate hit and remains the best-selling young-adult novel of all time.

Long credited with changing the way Y.A. fiction is written, Hinton’s novel changed the way teenagers read as well, empowering a generation to demand stories that reflected their realities. In fact, in the novel, the need for a representative literature is a central aspect of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis’s existential crisis. The book’s famous statement of theme, “Stay gold,” is of course a reference to Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and then there’s the not-quite-believable assertion that the novel was written as a “theme” for Ponyboy’s English class: “Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn’t be so quick to judge.” Despite its obviousness, this device strikes me as crucial to the book, providing a context for the occasionally clunky deus ex machina and foreshadowing, not to mention the sometimes workmanlike prose. To an adolescent, the clunkers probably reinforce the authenticity of the book’s voice, but the framing device establishes that unpolished authenticity as an aesthetic construction.

One suspects, however, that it was accidental here, or unconscious, just as it’s likely that Hinton’s echo of the testimonial frame Salinger used in “The Catcher in the Rye” (“If you really want to hear about it”) wasn’t consciously intended, nor was Hinton’s literalization of Holden’s “If a body catch a body coming through the rye” into the rescue of a group of children from a burning church. In fact, what struck me most as an adult reader (and sometime Y.A. novelist) is the degree to which “The Outsiders” is derivative of the popular literature of its time, sometimes obliquely, as in the Salinger parallels, sometimes more directly. Hinton once said that “the major influence on my writing has been my reading” and names Shirley Jackson as one of her favorite writers. The literal truth of this statement is borne out in these two passages taken from the opening paragraphs of “The Outsiders” and of Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (1962).

First Jackson: “I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.”

And now Hinton: “I have light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes. I wish they were more gray, because I hate most guys that have green eyes, but I have to be content with what I have.”

Although such a strong resemblance between two works would probably be viewed with suspicion in this time of heightened alertness to plagiarism, this and other echoes strike me as crucial to the success of Hinton’s novel. They soften the challenging nature of the book’s subject matter by wrapping it in references, tropes and language familiar to its adolescent readers, even as they alleviate the fears of those readers’ too-earnest parents. Right after the Jackson echo, for example, Ponyboy’s older brother, Sodapop, is characterized as “16-going-on-17.” A quotation from “The Sound of Music” would seem out of place in a novel rife with “blades” and “heaters” and teenage pregnancy, but it’s hard to deny after Ponyboy’s immediate assertion that “nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do.”

Indications of Ponyboy’s, and Hinton’s, love continue throughout. Randy Anderson’s “If his old man had just belted him — just once, he might still be alive” sounds a lot like James Dean’s “If he had the guts to knock Mom cold once, then maybe she’d be happy” in “Rebel Without a Cause,” while the scene in which Dallas Winston waves around a gun until the cops shoot him is a cross between the climax of that movie, when Sal Mineo is gunned down for brandishing a weapon that (like Dally’s) is unloaded, and Natalie Wood’s famous “How many bullets?” speech from “West Side Story.”

Going right down the honors English syllabus: Ponyboy and Johnny curl up together for warmth like Ishmael and Queequeg in “Moby-Dick.” Pony’s admonition to himself —“Don’t think” — is as Hemingway “code hero” as it comes. Johnny’s half mechanical, half sublime parsing of Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is reminiscent of Mick Kelly’s response to Beethoven’s Fifth in “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” And of course Pony, witness to and chronicler of his friends’ demise, could be the Midwestern cousin Nick Carraway left behind. If there’s a reference to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I can’t find it, save perhaps in the Boo Radleyesque names (although Hinton has said that “Peanuts the Pony” was the first book she ever checked out of the library, so who knows). The text even presupposes judgments about appropriate reading material for a 14-year-old: “I’d read everything in the house about 50 million times,” Ponyboy informs us, “even Darry’s copy of ‘The Carpetbaggers,’ though he’d told me I wasn’t old enough to read it. I thought so too after I finished it.”

The intertextual musings come to a head when Johnny tells Pony that Dallas reminds him of the Southern men in “Gone With the Wind,” which the two boys have been reading to combat boredom while they hide from the police. In Johnny’s view, Dally’s refusal to turn in his friend Two-Bit for vandalism is like the Confederate rebels’ “riding into sure death because they were gallant.” Pony initially rejects this reading, but something about it nags him: “Of all of us, Dally was the one I liked least. He didn’t have Soda’s understanding or dash, or Two-Bit’s humor, or even Darry’s superman qualities. But I realized that these three appealed to me because they were like the heroes in the novels I read. Dally was real. I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me.”

This is good stuff — great stuff for a teenager. Dally’s “realness” is made apparent by characters in a book; by contrast, the other members of the gang, who’ve limited themselves to playing roles they’ve picked up elsewhere, are suddenly seen as less real, enabling Pony to understand why, at the beginning of the novel, Cherry Valance shyly declared, “I kind of admire him.” What goes unsaid until the end of the story is that Pony, like Dally, needs a book to explain him, but is forced to write it himself.

In his introduction to “Slow Learner,” Thomas Pynchon remarks that the appropriate “attitude toward death” that characterizes serious fiction is usually absent in young-adult literature; but one feels “The Outsiders” would pass Pynchon’s test. Dally is fearless, which Pony recognizes as heroic but also foolish. That Dally’s death scene is a mesh of two of the most enduring moments in American cinema is beside the point. The question is not where the material comes from (“West Side Story” is based on “Romeo and Juliet,” after all, and James Dean’s antihero is a latter-day Bartleby or Raskolnikov) but what the writer does with it. The test comes when Ponyboy sums up the conflict between Socs and Greasers as “too vast a problem to be just a personal thing.” Salinger couldn’t get away with that line, and neither could Pynchon, because their books are too idiosyncratic, too distinct. But Hinton, earnest teenager that she was, wrote to reveal the universality of her Greasers, just as Wright and Ellison did for African-Americans, or Paley and Roth did for Jews.

Each time I came across another borrowing, the success of her strategy was impressed upon me. And at the same time I was reminded of 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan, who was flayed last year for borrowing excessively from various sources for her own novel. If some high-minded, plagiarism-wary reader had persuaded S. E. Hinton to remove all references to the books and movies that inspired her, “The Outsiders” probably wouldn’t have slipped past the internal (let alone official) censors that governed ’60s adolescence. Forty years on, we may see the seams of its gilding, but the heart of Hinton’s groundbreaking novel is still, indisputably, gold.

Dale Peck, who has written for adults and children, is currently at work on his first young-adult novel.

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The Outsiders: Book Review

The Outsiders book review

Ponyboy Curtis is a name that will get recognition in most discussions about books. And if it doesn’t, then you need to leave right away. He is the protagonist in S. E. Hinton’s debut novel The Outsiders and part of most school curriculums. Keep reading to find out why you should give this iconic novel a read

The Outsiders Sumamry

As Ponyboy Curtis exits the movie theater and heads home, he is approached by the Socs, the rival gang of the greasers, the gang that Ponyboy is a part of. Badly outnumbered, Ponyboy tries to fight back and is saved by members of the greasers, including his older brothers Sodapop and Darry, the parent figure of the family.

The next night, Ponyboy goes to a drive-in movie theater with the tough-skinned Dally and the shy and quiet Johnny. He is viewed as a little brother by everyone in the gang. The group meets two Soc girls and Ponyboy realizes that the Socs don’t have it as great as he once thought. And he finally was able to relate to a Soc.

The night takes a turn for the worst when the trio runs into a group of Socs. Cherry, one of the girls that the group met tonight plays peacemaker. Ponyboy finally arrives home, past his curfew and his oldest brother Darry yells at him for being recklessly late. The anger by Darry seems unfair to Ponyboy who believes that Darry has become cold since their parents died in a car accident and runs away.

Ponyboy   meets up with Johnny and they hang out but once again, the Socs find them and have them outnumbered. What happens next changes the course of everyone’s life as things get out of control. Now, Ponyboy is on the run from the cop and fears he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. 

I remember reading The Outsiders in school and that was one of the first times a reading assignment didn’t feel like an assignment. We were assigned a certain number of pages to read but I ended up finishing the book in a few sittings. 

Nowadays, I try to incorporate it into my reading list here and there. This is one of my favorite novels to read and I still can’t believe S. E. Hinton wrote in while still in high school! This novel was a gateway to other novels by her which I enjoyed a lot. She is an amazing author and someone I am very grateful to. 

The novel was inspired by events that happened around Hinton. That is why the book feels so authentic. As the reader, the characters feel relatable. This may be the one of the best novels to get students interested in reading. It worked for me and for millions of other people.

 Conclusion

Before the young adult took off in the 2000’s, we had S. E. Hinton and Ponyboy. Hopefully students still read this great novel and can’t find buried beneath The Hunger Games and Harry Potter , both novels that are also amazingly written. We are allowed to have multiple favorite novels and The Outsiders will always be a favorite of mine. 

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I read it in middle school as well and just loved it. I still have my original copy from all those years ago. And you are 100% right. It was an assignment that didn’t feel like an assignment.

Yup. Probably one of the best books to read for school ever!

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Is this some cheesy attempt to sell a book by listing it with renowned books?

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Why ‘The Outsiders’ Still Matters

By Margaret Eby

Margaret Eby

When S.E. Hinton published The Outsiders in 1967, a novel she began writing at age 15 and sold at 17, the idea of a teenager writing fiction for her peers was a novelty. Most of the literature handed down for high school students to read had, in Hinton’s estimation, nothing to do with the lived experiences of teenagers in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. “The authors of books for teen-agers are still 15 years behind the times,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times . “In the fiction they write, romance is still the most popular theme, with a horse-and-the-girl-who-loved-it coming in a close second.”

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Hinton’s novel, which describes in gritty detail the ongoing gang warfare between the lower-class Greasers and the well-to-do Socials, didn’t have much to do with romance or horses, unless you count her protagonist, the 14-year-old Greaser Ponyboy Curtis. But it was a hit with teenagers across the country. Fifty years later, the book has sold upwards of 15 million copies, become a steady feature on middle school reading lists, inspired a Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name and helped shape an entire literary genre marketed to young adults.

More than that: despite its age, The Outsiders continues to be a touchstone for adults who were born long after Hinton’s graduation from high school. For proof, just look at the long tail of the phrase “Stay gold, Ponyboy.” In The Outsiders , those are the dying words of Greaser Johnny Cade, itself a half-remembered quote from the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” In 2017, “Stay Gold” is a phrase you can find emblazoned on everything from T-shirts to throw pillows . It’s the title of an entire album by Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit and a song by Run the Jewels. Though the era of Socs and Greasers has long past, the adolescent dynamic Hinton picked up on remains, even though the name of the groups changes.

The Outsiders captured, as if in amber, the ongoing fight at the heart of the adolescent experience – knowing that the way things stand is wrong, but being unclear how to fix it, and frustrated with older adults for continuing on, obliviously. The differences between the Greasers and the Socs have to do with money, but behind them, Ponyboy realizes, they aren’t so different, if only they could figure that out.

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“The teenage years are a bad time,” Hinton wrote in her op-ed. “You’re idealistic. You can see what it should be. Unfortunately, you can see what it is, too.” It’s the same dynamic that drives filmmakers like Manchester by the Sea director Kenneth Lonergan to unpack the world of high school students. “Teenagers have that kind of freshness to the world,” Lonergan said in a recent New Yorker profile. “They just want to wipe out racism, for example. And you are just like ‘You are never going to do that. Just go to a restaurant instead.’ Who is right in that conversation?”

Though the specific social mores of The Outsiders are dated, that freshness remains, and continues to inspire writers. “I read The Outsiders when I was around 11 years old,” says Sara Benincasa, writer, comedian and author of the young adult book Great . “What has stuck with me is the sadness… The Outsiders is one of those books that made people believe juvenile fiction, or what the publishing industry eventually rebranded as ‘young adult’ fiction, could go beyond dating and cutesy shit to address real issues with depth and nuance.” For Benincasa, Hinton’s work proved that teens are up for being challenged with writing about big issues, ones to do with gender, sexuality, and violence. “I’d like to go deeper next time,” Benincasa notes. “That’s a book that showed me it could be done.”

Nick Greene, editor-at-large for Mental Floss was similarly impressed by Hinton’s tell-it-like-it-is approach. “What I remember affecting me most was that it was entertaining without trying to be entertaining,” Greene says. “Most of the books I had read up until that point were either explicitly goofy books like Sherlock Bones or Bunnicula or assigned school reading that intimidated or bored me. The Outsiders confronted serious stuff – poverty, loneliness, violence, insecurity – but was so compelling that I didn’t even notice it. There was a vibrant internal life to the book, which is that elusive quality that all good fiction has.”

And it wasn’t just Hinton’s work that inspired writers, but her background. “ The Outsiders is the book that made me want to be a writer,” Greene continues. “When I found out S.E. Hinton was only 15 when she started writing it, it totally changed my definition of what a writer was. It wasn’t a job you had to apply for after checking off a list of appropriate credentials – it was just something you did because you wanted to do it.”

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Maybe the most abiding lesson that Hinton taught authors about writing for teenagers is that they didn’t need to water down their prose to relate to a younger audience. A look at the most recent New York Times bestseller list proves it – for the last for weeks, the most popular young adult book is Angie Thomas’  The Hate U Give , a book about a 16-year-old girl grappling with the aftermath of her friend’s fatal shooting by a police officer. Nor has the work of popular YA authors like John Green or Woodson shied away from serious “adult” issues like violence and racism. This is no “a horse-and-the-girl-who-loved-it” stuff. Many writers have heeded the advice Hinton gave as a teenage author. “Writers shouldn’t be afraid that they will shock their teenage audience,” Hinton wrote in the Times . “But give them something to hang on to. Show them that some people don’t sell out and that everyone can’t be bought. Do it realistically. Earn respect by giving it.” In other words: stay gold.

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Book Review: The Outsiders

The Outsiders is a beautiful coming of age story that I would recommend for everyone in middle school and high school. The book’s plot is about the rivalry between the Greasers and Socs (focusing on the Greasers). The Socs are the rich, popular kids while the Greasers are the poor, bad kids. The story is about social status, growing up, finding yourself, and rebellion. Anyone in middle/high school can relate to this book in one way or another. The problems discussed transcend time and are applicable to today’s teens. I think it’s very hard to find a book about teenagers that is about real teenagers, not unrealistic heroes that are facing problems that we never face. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that type of book, but it was really nice to find a book that I could relate to. It makes you feel like you are not alone and that other people are struggling with similar issues. What makes The Outsiders such an amazing book is the characters and their relationships. Each character is important and unique. They are all their own individuals and have complex backstories. They are all “real” people. Everyone who reads this book can find at least one character they identify with. For example, Ponyboy is an amazing student who feels like he is under immense pressure. And Darry is struggling with the responsibility of taking care of his younger brothers. The book also focuses on the relationships between the characters. All of the Greasers view each other as family members. They are very protective and loving towards each other. The relationship between the Greasers and the Socs is very strained. Most members of each gang despise each other. A flaw with the book is that the solutions to the plot’s problems seemed simplistic. The plot is all wrapped up in one big bow which doesn’t seem realistic. To be fair, S.E. Hilton wrote this book when she was in high school and that perspective undoubtedly played into this. I would recommend this book for ages 10+. The book does contain some mild swearing (it’s not too bad). It also contains underage drinking and smoking. It is a fairly short book that was easy to read. I would definitely recommend The Outsiders by S.E. Hilton because of it’s interesting plot, realistic characters, and relatable story of teenage angst.

A Journey of Words

Book review: the outsiders, the outsiders by s.e. hinton, my rating: 5 / 5 genre: classic ya coming of age fiction.

I read this book in 8th grade, and I remembered a few things about it, mostly that I liked it more than most books I read for school back then. Reading it again as an adult, decades later, I was not thinking about theme or symbolism, but reading just for the enjoyment of it. I have to admit that I’m pretty far removed from this culture, not just because it’s set so long ago, but also because I’ve lived in a pretty sheltered, rural area all my life, especially as a teenager. Still, I enjoyed the simple writing style, the characterization, and the dynamics of the main group of characters. I felt for Ponyboy and Johnny in their no-win situation and in this culture that gave all of those on the high and low extremes of the social classes the feeling of futility and inevitability. My daughter, who is also in 8th grade right now, is reading this book for school, and I look forward to discussing her thoughts when she’s done. While the culture may have changed, I’d imagine that the overall idea of the clashing between the “high” and “low” classes, or other extremes of society, still happens plenty, especially in places with higher populations. The idea that “things are bad everywhere” and that people can strive to change their circumstances is still relevant to today. I’m glad I re-read this book, and though I don’t necessarily like the idea of over-analyzing literature for school, I think it’s still a good book for teens to read.

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Book Review

The outsiders.

• S.E. Hinton
• Coming-of-Age

Readability Age Range

• Viking Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Group
• New York Herald TribuneBest Teenage Books List, 1967;Chicago TribuneBook World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967; Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975; American Library Association Best Young Adults Books, 1975; and Massachusetts Children's Book Award, 1979

Year Published

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Ponyboy Curtis has seen a lot in his 14 years. His parents are dead, and now he lives with his older brothers, Soda and Darry. They’re all “greasers,” underprivileged kids who are known for fighting and for wearing their hair slicked back. They fight with the wealthy “socs” who seem to have it all. When Ponyboy’s friend Johnny accidentally kills a soc named Bob, the murder sets off a chain of troubling and violent events for the greasers. But through the turmoil, Ponyboy has heart-to-heart talks with some of Bob’s soc friends, and he realizes that the greasers and socs aren’t as different as he once thought.

Christian Beliefs

Johnny and Ponyboy hide out in an abandoned church. While there, Ponyboy recalls how he and Johnny used to go to church regularly until some of the gang joined them one Sunday and made a scene. They never went back.

Other Belief Systems

Authority roles.

Twenty-year-old Darry has sacrificed his dream of college to serve as the sole parent for his younger teenage brothers. He works long hours to support them and would do anything to protect them. He insists Ponyboy keep his curfew and maintain good grades, but he also permits the boys to smoke, fight and engage in a number of other questionable and unsafe behaviors. The boys’ deceased parents are remembered as loving individuals. Jerry Wood and Mr. Syme, both teachers, are the adult characters in the story, and both demonstrate their belief that Ponyboy is something more than a worthless thug.

Profanity & Violence

Although the author implies frequent profanity, she stops short of actually using it. The greasers and the socs regularly fight one another, often beating each other. They draw blood, inflict deep wounds and concussions and even kill.

Sexual Content

Ponyboy says he knows what goes on in bedrooms during parties. Darry insinuates that Soda’s girlfriend left town because she was pregnant and Soda was hurt to learn it wasn’t his child.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

Many underage characters in the book use alcohol and drugs, shoplift, fight (sometimes with weapons), cheat, lie and have criminal records. Most smoke habitually. Ponyboy says it’s calming, and he and others display behaviors when they can’t smoke that reveal their nicotine addictions. Dally Winston, a tough greaser who loves Johnny like a brother, purposely threatens police with an empty gun so they will fire on him. His desperate death is essentially a suicide.

In 1988 the author won the Margaret Alexander Edwards Award for her contribution to books for young adults.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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The Outsiders

By s. e. hinton.

'The Outsiders' is an excellent book by S. E. Hinton, though The Outsiders' many social and moral lessons are pretty old. Yet, its freshness remains and continues to motivate many writers.

Article written by Ugo Juliet

Former Lecturer. Author of multiple books. Degree from University Of Nigeria, Nsukka.

‘ The Outsiders ‘ is a youth novel by S. E. Hinton published in 1967. Ponyboy Curtis and his gang of greasers regularly fight with another gang, the upper-class Socs. Ponyboy learns valuable lessons about family, unity, friendship, and goodness and is affiliated with a group when a Greaser kills a Soc.

‘ The Outsiders ‘ is one of the books that made people believe and start reading juvenile fiction, or what the publishing industry refers to as young adult fiction. People learned that juvenile fiction could go beyond dating and courtesy topics and move to address real issues with depth and nuance. Hinton’s work has proved to people that teenagers can write about significant issues, such as gender, sexuality, and violence. 

‘Spoiler free’ Summary

Walking home after seeing a Paul Newman movie, the narrator Ponyboy Curtis is jumped by members of a rival gang, the Socs, but his gang members arrive in time to scare them off. Dally Winston invites them to see a movie the next night, and Ponyboy and Johnny agree to go. At the movies, they make friends with two Soc girls, Cherry Valance and Marcia. Cherry and Ponyboy head to the concession stand. When they get there, Ponyboy talks about Johnny’s experience of being beaten by Socs, which explains Johnny’s decision to carry a knife.

Two-Bit Mathews, a member of the greasers, shows up at the movies and offers to drive the Soc girls home. Cherry and Ponyboy talk about why Socs and greasers are different and discover they have some things in common. Ponyboy tells Cherry that his oldest brother, Darry, doesn’t like him. Darry took over the responsibility for him after the death of their parents in a car accident.

The boyfriends of the Soc girls and other Socs arrive in a blue Mustang. Cherry and Marcia rode home with the Socs boys to prevent a fight. Ponyboy and Johnny stay out and sleep in a vacant lot which makes Ponyboy get home late. His brother, Darry, slaps him for coming home late, which made Ponyboy run away with Johnny. 

The Outsiders Plot Summary

Spoiler alert: important details of the novel are revealed below.

The book starts when the main character Ponyboy Curtis , a greaser (the gang of poor East Side kids in Tulsa), leaves a movie theatre after watching a Paul Newman movie and begins to walk home alone. A car trails him, and he suspects that it is filled with many Socs, their rival gang in that city. Socs are members of an affluent West Side gang who recently beat up Johnny and constantly fight them. The car stops, and as he suspected, it was filled with their rival gang members. They came out and started beating him up, trying to cut off his hair.

Ponyboy cries out for help, and his cries alert his brothers and fellow greasers, and the Socs flee. Later, Ponyboy’s guardian, his older brother Darry, scolds him for walking alone.

Johnny and Ponyboy go to the drive-in the next night with fellow greaser Dally who had invited them for a movie night. Ponyboy becomes friends with one of the Soc girls named Cherry Valance even though Dally was annoying the girls. Cherry says not all Socs are bad when Ponyboy tells her about the Socs’ attack on Johnny. Cherry discusses some of the Socs problems with him, and they discover that they share a shared love of watching sunsets.

They all walk out of the drive-in together and are confronted by some Socs. One of the Socs is Bob, Cherry’s boyfriend, and they almost start fighting, but Cherry stops the confrontation by going home with Bob. Instead of going home immediately, Ponyboy talks with Johnny in the vacant lot and falls asleep. He returns home late, and his brother Darry was so pissed that he hit him. Ponyboy didn’t like that and runs from the house and goes with his friend Johnny to the park. It was there that they ran into Bob and his Soc friends. The Socs attack them, dunking Ponyboy’s head into the fountain. Johnny stabs Bob, killing him in the process. Dally helps them escape town.

The boys hide in an abandoned church near their countryside. When they got there, they shaved their hair to disguise themselves. They spent five days talking, smoking cigarettes, and reading from Gone with the Wind while Dally visits them regularly.

One day, on the way back from a restaurant, they find the church in flames. The boys run inside to save a group of schoolchildren who have gone there for a picnic. The three of them could protect the children but got injured in the process and were rushed to the hospital. It was there that Ponyboy recognizes for the first time how much Darry truly cares for him at the hospital. He also learns that Dally will recover, but Johnny was in a critical condition.

The next night was scheduled for a big fight between the greasers and the Socs. Ponyboy was able to talk to Bob’s best friend, Randy, who says that he has decided not to fight because, after Bob’s death, he has realized it won’t accomplish anything. Though Ponyboy is sick and sceptical about the purpose of fighting, he participates in the fight, and the greasers win.

After that, Dally and Ponyboy went to the hospital to visit Johnny, where they heard his last words: “ Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold .” With a heavy heart over Johnny’s death, Dally flees the hospital, robs a grocery store, threatens the police with his unloaded gun, and is killed. Ponyboy got worse after joining the fight with his injuries from the fire. This made him unconscious and delirious for several days.

After his recovery, all the gang members from both sides attend a court hearing where All witnesses absolve johnny as having acted in self-defence. However, Ponyboy is depressed by all that has happened, and his grades begin to suffer, plus he almost slips into violence. His English teacher tries to help him by asking him to write a final essay on any topic of his choice in order for him to pass his exam. Ponyboy couldn’t find a topic for his English paper, which leads to a fight between him and Darry about his lack of motivation. Sodapop becomes angry and pleads with the brothers to stop fighting because it is tearing him apart, and they agree not to fight anymore.

Later that night, Ponyboy examines a copy of Gone with the Wind that Johnny left him. A note drops from the book where Johnny has written to Ponyboy, spurring him to keep his idealism and never give up hope for a better life. Ponyboy decides to write his essay about all the happenings in his life in the last few weeks. With this book, he hopes to bring the world’s attention to the plight of boys like himself and honour the memory of those who died. And he wrote the first sentence of the essay, which is also the novel’s first sentence.

What does Ponyboy realize about his brother Darry when he comes back home?

Ponyboy realizes that his brother Darry loves and cares for him. He saw him cry at the hospital and he was shocked. He now realized that his brother was strong enough to shape his life in the right way, not out of hatred.

What is the one rule besides sticking together in ‘The Outsiders ‘?

The one rule of the greasers, besides sticking together, is not to get caught. Among the greasers, those living in the west side of town, where it is considered poor environs and so lower-class people, have a rule of always being there for each other -stick together as their number one rule. 

Why did Ponyboy assume responsibility for Bob’s death?

Ponyboy went into depression after just witnessing the deaths of his two close friends – Johnny and Dally. He has had a hard time accepting reality, starting he is suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and attempting to repress his memories. This made him assume responsibility for Bob Sheldon’s death.

What does Ponyboy do after Darry hits him?

Darry the elder brother of Ponyboy was very angry with him when ponyboy came home around 2 am. They argue and Darry slaps him for staying out so late. This action angered the ponyboy that he leaves their house in a fury and goes to meet his friend Johnny in the lot where greasers hang out.

Why was Dally upset when Johnny told him to leave Cherry alone?

Dally is a member of the greasers who was tough and someone that Johnny admires a lot. When Johnny and ponyboy went to the movies and befriended the Socs girls, dally came there and started disturbing the girls. He put his legs on Chery’s chair and tried telling her things but she wasn’t interested. Johnny told him to stop disturbing her and this upset him. As ponyboy remarked. “You just didn’t tell Dally Winston what to do.” 

The Outsiders Quiz

Dive into the world of loyalty, rivalry, and self-discovery with our ' The Outsiders ' Trivia Quiz! Do you have the insight and knowledge to navigate the complex lives of the Greasers and the Socs? Accept the challenge now and prove your mastery over S. E. Hinton's timeless tale of friendship and struggle

1) Who is the author of the poem ' Nothing Gold Can Stay '?

2) What happens to Johnny and Ponyboy at the park?

3) Who is the protagonist of ' The Outsiders '?

4) What does Johnny tell Ponyboy before he dies?

5) What weapon does Johnny use to defend Ponyboy?

6) What injury does Johnny sustain from the church fire?

7) What do Ponyboy and Randy discuss when Randy visits him?

8) How does the novel ' The Outsiders ' end?

9) What does Ponyboy decide to write about for his English assignment?

10) What is the setting of the novel?

11) Who is the author of ' The Outsiders '?

12) What does Two-Bit give to Dally in the hospital?

13) What are the two rival groups in ' The Outsiders '?

14) Who is the Soc girl that Ponyboy befriends?

15) What does Ponyboy realize about the Socs and the Greasers at the end of the novel?

16) Where do Johnny and Ponyboy hide after the park incident?

17) What is the significance of the poem ' Nothing Gold Can Stay ' in the novel?

18) What is the name of the high school that Ponyboy and his friends attend?

19) What happens to the church where Johnny and Ponyboy are hiding?

20) What does Ponyboy do to cope with the loss of Johnny and Dallas?

21) Who gets injured trying to save children from the burning church?

22) How do Johnny and Ponyboy disguise themselves?

23) Who helps Johnny and Ponyboy while they are hiding?

24) What event leads to Ponyboy and Johnny running away?

25) How does Dallas react to Johnny's death?

26) What does Ponyboy do when he is confronted by Socs after Johnny's death?

27) Who is Ponyboy's oldest brother?

28) What is the result of the rumble between the Socs and the Greasers?

29) What causes Ponyboy to pass out after the rumble?

30) What novel do Johnny and Ponyboy read while hiding?

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About Ugo Juliet

Juliet Ugo is an experienced content writer and a literature expert with a passion for the written word with over a decade of experience. She is particularly interested in analyzing books, and her insightful interpretations of various genres have made her a well-known authority in the field.

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• Perspectives

Appreciations: S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders :

The classic novel hits the half-century mark.

BY Gregory McNamee • April 27, 2017

We humans are tribal people, organizing ourselves into bands and clans that divide the world into us and them, self and other: Goths. Bloods. Rotarians. Where blood is not the basis, something else becomes the point of division: a haircut or tattoo, a band or political issue. And for all our talk of the oneness of humankind, we seem to thrive on making such distinctions.

Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss, got it right in his prescient story from 1953, The Sneetches , in which curious yellow creatures follow an apartheid based on whether they sport green stars in their navels. A dozen years later, about the time Seuss’ first readers were approaching young adulthood, Susan Eloise Hinton, herself a teenager, began writing a story with echoes of Romeo and Juliet by way of West Side Story and of Lord of the Flies alike, recounting the clash between tribes in the rough and tumble of Oklahoma.

“I am a greaser,” says Sodapop, one hero of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders . “I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man, do I have fun!” There’s no Officer Krupke as a foil, but Sodapop’s self-mockery speaks to the way straight-and-narrow Tulsans view his kind, kids who hang out in machine shops and garages with cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves, kids whose only path out of the grittier part of town is the Army or prison.

Published on April 24, 1967, The Outsiders was an immediate hit. I read it when it first came out in paperback, about the time I began to sort out what my own tribe might be. (Its members smoked pot, drank good coffee, opposed the war, and read poetry.) The book has since come under regular assault from censorious civilians who wish to see it banned from schools and libraries for its language, its forbidden substances, its uncompromising look at the violence disaffected young people can and do commit. But it remains in print 50 years on, changing the lives of its readers, truly a modern classic and well-deserving of that name.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor.

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Review: “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton

The Outsiders remains one of the most popular books for young adults despite being written in the mid-1960s. I recall my 8th grade study hall talking loudly about the book before we settled into our homework. Even my husband kept his copy of the book with Sharpie arrows on every few pages. Bearing in mind the harsh reality S.E. Hinton describes, I had to reread The Outsiders and see how the values jive with faith .

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

One of The Outsiders strongest qualities is its unflinching depiction of reality. I cried for the last 80 pages of the 180 page book because I felt completely immersed in Ponyboy’s world. Because we walk in Ponyboy’s shoes as we read, we see the beauty and strength hidden in gangs and switchblades. This group of young men with various rough backgrounds came together as a family. Their main concern was protecting and providing for the other members of their gang.

We also learn of our common humanity along with Ponyboy. In a conversation with the Soc Cherry, Ponyboy says, “‘That’s why we’re separated,’ I said. ‘It’s not money, it’s feeling – you don’t feel anything and we feel too violently,’” (p 38). We see the good and the bad of both sides. As Ponyboy explains towards the end, it came down to the person. Boys from the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks saved people, and boys from the ‘good’ side of the tracks jumped innocent passerby. The mature understanding of humanity Ponyboy gains ultimately fulfills Johnny’s advice to “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” (p 148).

Hiding in Church

Ponyboy tells us that he and Johnny used to go to church consistently. That stopped when they brought other Greasers with them who couldn’t sit still and caused a scene. Yet, in their time of trouble, Ponyboy and Johnny wind up back in a church.

Hinton doesn’t expressly bring faith into the story. Nobody runs around quoting scripture. A preacher doesn’t convert all the gangs into perfect, law-abiding citizens who never fight. And honestly, the book is better for it. The book would feel deceptive if these tough, complex characters suddenly turned into religious robots. Instead, the Greasers and the Socs grow in empathy and understanding. We see the personal aspect of faith reflected in how each person responds to death. God lovingly created each human being with their own strengths, weaknesses, trials, and temptations. Hinton does an excellent job recording it.

• Hinton, S. E.  The Outsiders . New York: Penguin Books, 1967.

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Backstory and enduring appeal

Plot summary, adaptations.

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The Outsiders

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The Outsiders , American young adult (YA) novel by S.E. Hinton about rival teen gangs in Oklahoma that was published in 1967 and was one of the first modern YA novels. The novel centers on Ponyboy Curtis, a 14-year-old boy who narrates about two weeks of his life in a city (presumed to be Tulsa ) that is deeply divided between the working-class “greasers” and upper-class “Socs.” Orphaned or all but abandoned by their parents, Ponyboy and his fellow greasers navigate the rampant class -based violence of their community alone.

Susan Eloise Hinton wrote the bulk of The Outsiders , her first novel, when she was a junior in high school , shortly after receiving a failing grade in her creative writing class. By the time she was 17, she had sold the book for publication. Her editor suggested publishing under her first and middle initials “S.E.” instead of under “Susan” to better appeal to male readers. Hinton was 18 years old when The Outsiders was published in 1967. The novel’s storyline was inspired by Hinton’s personal experience with the fragmented social groups of her hometown of Tulsa. A real-life incident in which a greaser friend of hers was physically attacked by a group of more socially accepted students became the opening scene of the novel. In an interview with The New Yorker in 2014, Hinton said that of the books published in the 1960s, “There was only a handful…having teen-age protagonists: Mary Jane wants to go to the prom with the football hero and ends up with the boy next door and has a good time anyway. That didn’t ring true to my life. I was surrounded by teens and I couldn’t see anything going on in those books that had anything to do with real life.”

The Outsiders sold more than 15 million copies in the first 50 years of its publication and was translated into 30 languages. It has a strong presence in fan-fiction writing, with thousands of adaptations posted to fan websites . It frequently appears on lists of banned books for its depictions of gang violence, alcohol and drug use , smoking , family dysfunction, and its characters’ use of profanity ; between 1990 and 1999 it was among the top 100 most frequently challenged books in U.S. schools and libraries . Some teachers and librarians have credited the book’s strong characterization and its story of social marginalization as reasons for its enduring appeal. The male greaser characters are portrayed as showing vulnerability in an era when displays of emotion went against the cultural norm for boys and men.

The Outsiders opens as Ponyboy Curtis leaves a daytime showing of a Paul Newman film and reflects on life in his hometown. His community is divided between two conflicting factions: the Socs, short for “Socials,” and the greasers, so-called for the hair grease used to groom and style their hair. The Socs are described by Ponyboy as “the jet set, the West-side rich kids…who jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper for being a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next,” while the greasers of the city’s East Side are “poorer than the Socs and the middle class” and are considered “almost like hoods.” Ponyboy ends the comparison by adding, “I’m not saying that either Socs or greasers are better; that’s just the way things are.”

The Socs’ propensity for “jumping” greasers makes Ponyboy afraid to walk home alone, and he reflects on the other greasers he would like to have by his side for protection: Dallas (“Dally”) Winston (who has just been released from a juvenile reformatory ), Keith (“Two-Bit”) Matthews, Steve Randle, Johnny Cade, and Ponyboy’s elder brothers, Darrel (“Darry”) and Sodapop, who have taken care of him ever since their parents were killed in a car crash. Sure enough, a group of Socs jump out of a car and attack Ponyboy, holding a knife to his throat until his own gang arrives to rescue him.

Later that night Ponyboy attends a drive-in movie with Dally and Johnny, where they meet two Soc girls, Cherry Valance (nicknamed for her red hair) and Marcia, who attend the same high school as Ponyboy. Typically soft-spoken Johnny defends Marcia and Cherry from Dally’s harassment, and Johnny and Ponyboy befriend the girls. Two-Bit arrives and offers to drive the girls home. As they walk to Two-Bit’s house, Cherry and Ponyboy talk about the differences between their two social groups. Ponyboy thinks the only difference is that the greasers like Elvis Presley while the Socs like the Beatles and that money is what really separates the two groups. Cherry tells him, “It’s not just money…You greasers have a different set of values . You’re more emotional. We’re sophisticated—cool to the point of not feeling anything. Nothing is real with us.” When Marcia and Cherry’s boyfriends, Randy and Bob, suddenly arrive in their Mustang, the girls go with them even though the Soc boys have been drinking, because Cherry wants to avoid a fight between the greasers and the Socs. Cherry also tells Ponyboy, “if I see you in the hall at school or someplace and don’t say hi, well, it’s not personal or anything.”

Afterward, however, as Ponyboy and Johnny walk home through a local park, they are accosted by a group of Socs, including Randy and Bob, who are in search of the greasers who “picked up their girls.” The Socs hold Ponyboy’s head underwater in the park’s fountain, but they release him just before he loses consciousness . Recovering from his near-drowning, Ponyboy sees Johnny sitting quietly and holding a bloody switchblade, which he began carrying earlier in the summer after a violent encounter with some Socs. A stunned Johnny tells Ponyboy that he has just stabbed and killed Bob.

Ponyboy and Johnny flee, and with the help of Dally, they hide out in an abandoned church outside of town. To try and disguise themselves, they both cut their hair, and Ponyboy bleaches his hair blond. They spend the next few days hiding out, reading, and playing poker . In perhaps the most well-known scene of the book, after Johnny and Ponyboy watch the sun rise one morning, Ponyboy recites Robert Frost ’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” which uses the metaphor of nature’s seasonal cycles to describe the fleeting qualities of beauty, youth, innocence, and life itself.

When Dally arrives at the hideout a few days after the killing, he takes Johnny and Ponyboy into town for lunch and brings a glimmer of hope for Johnny’s future: Cherry Valance has agreed to testify that the Socs were drunk and “looking for a fight” the night Bob was killed. Believing Cherry and Ponyboy’s accounts of self-defense will afford him leniency, Johnny decides to turn himself into the police . But when the boys return to their hideout they find it burning, presumably from an unextinguished cigarette. After learning that a group of picnicking schoolchildren who had snuck into the church to play are now trapped, Ponyboy, Dally, and Johnny run into the fire to rescue them. A falling beam from the burning church breaks Johnny’s back, leaving him hospitalized and in critical condition with third-degree burns . Yet the greaser boys emerge as local heroes.

Meanwhile, the greasers and Socs plan a “rumble”: a no-weapons fight to avenge each group’s grievances. During the rumble the Socs retreat, leaving the greasers as victors. But when Ponyboy and Dally arrive at the hospital to regale Johnny of their victory, they find his condition has worsened. Referencing the Frost poem, Johnny whispers before dying, “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” Filled with grief and anger, Dally says, “That’s what you get for tryin’ to help people,” and then bolts out of the hospital.

As Ponyboy tells the rest of the greasers of Johnny’s death, their grief is interrupted by a call from Dally: he has just robbed a grocery store and is running from the police. The greasers run to a vacant lot just in time to see Dally draw a “black object” from his pants—an unloaded gun he had started carrying to “bluff” his enemies. The police shoot and kill Dally, and Ponyboy observes, “Nobody would write editorials praising Dally. Two friends of mine had died that night: one a hero, the other a hoodlum,” even though it was Dally who had pulled Johnny out from under the burning beam in the church. The days that follow are a blur for Ponyboy: he is concussed from the rumble and deeply traumatized by his friends’ deaths. Assigned an essay for his English class as a way to save his slipping grade, he decides to memorialize Johnny and Dally. Ponyboy begins to write his story, setting down the very same words and scene that began the novel.

In 1983 The Outsiders was adapted into a film of the same name . Directed by Francis Ford Coppola , it featured a cast of young actors who soon became household names. C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy), Matt Dillon (Dallas), Ralph Macchio (Johnny), Patrick Swayze (Darry), Rob Lowe (Sodapop), Emilio Estevez (Two-Bit), and Tom Cruise (Steve) counted among the greasers; Diane Lane appeared as Cherry Valance and Leif Garrett as her boyfriend Bob. The film was dedicated to school librarian Jo Ellen Misakian and her students at a school in Fresno , California ; in 1980 Misakian and her students had written to Coppola to suggest he make a film version of their favorite book. The film premiered to mixed reviews— The New York Times called it “spectacularly out of touch” and “laughably earnest”—but it successfully launched the careers of several of its young stars. It came to be considered a classic film of the Brat Pack generation of actors.

In 2023 a musical adaptation of The Outsiders debuted in La Jolla, California, followed by a Broadway production in 2024, coproduced by actress Angelina Jolie . Later that year it garnered 12 Tony Award nominations and won in four categories, including best musical.