Still A Dreamer

Have you ever read a book that exceeded your expectations? Great, isn’t it? I didn’t know quite what to expect from The Outsiders; I’d noticed it had a special placement in my library because it’s considered a classic, but I didn’t look twice. What got me bringing it home, was Patrick Swayze. Yup. Patrick Swayze.

After he passed away, there were many reviews of his film career on TV, and in one pastiche of his films was The Outsiders. Checked it out on Netflix to find it has an all-star cast, (undiscovered at that time), was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and sounded really interesting. But first I had to read the book.

The Outsiders is a story about a band of brothers and friends called Greasers for the way they wore their hair. They weren’t really hoods, by their own definition – not that hardened or criminals yet – but were a gang of sorts. They were picked on regularly – pretty much for kicks – by another gang, the Socs, the rich, upper class kids from the other side of town. The story’s focus is primarily on Ponyboy, Soda and Darry, three brothers aged 14 – 20, living on their own after their parents were killed in an accident. Social Services agreed to let them stay together if they don’t get into trouble. Darry, the oldest, gave up his dreams of college and works long hours; Soda dropped out of high school and got a job to help; both hoping that Pony, an A student and successful in track, can make something of himself, maybe be the brother to get to college.

But life in their neighborhood is fraught with danger as the Socs take any opportunity to beat up on the Greasers, regardless of their age, Pony being just 14. One friend, Johnny, has been beat up so badly, he’s constantly terrified. Another, Dally, has been in the most trouble of them all, and is the most dangerous … yet a caring protector of Johnny. Each of the characters is very well drawn; while it might be easy to criticize them for their lifestyle of constant smoking, shoplifting, quick inclination to fight and so on, it is soon apparent that they are all each other has in an area that has few breaks for them and a dim future, further clouded over by the threat of getting beaten up as a way of life. Some of them get tougher and angrier, some sadder, more frightened. But as tough and irreverent as they are, you are compelled to care about them.

The story comes to a head in an incident where what would have been just another case of the Socs beating up a Greaser gets horribly out of hand. Everyone’s life changes in a heartbeat. S.E. Hinton has built the characters and events up to this climax masterfully, and from this point, the boys’ lives get catapulted into a series of events, both heroic and tragic, that define their lives and futures.

The Outsiders is a truly terrific read. Considering it was written in 1967, it’s barely aged at all. Those same kids are still toughing it out somewhere on the rough side of a town in the USA. Hinton’s characters are every bit as believable as well-drawn characters written about today. Maybe they turn to drugs now instead of cigarettes; it makes no difference. Hinton has taken boys who might seem like the bottom of society’s barrel and made them believable, 3-dimensional, and totally deserving of our respect and empathy.

For writing The Outsiders, along with several other YA books, Hinton was the recipient of the ALA’s first Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1988, recognizing an author whose writing for young adults provided “an  authentic voice that continues to illuminate their experiences and emotions, giving insight into their lives.”

Now here’s what surprised me. I read the biography in the back of the book to find that S.E. Hinton is a woman. I did not see that coming. I did not imagine that such a gritty story about gangs and greasers in the 60’s would have come from a woman’s pen, (and trust me, I am not at all sexist.) And then I wondered – if she had not been published as S.E., versus Susan Eloise, would this particular book have found such a broad audience? Would people have trusted that a story of this nature would have been as well-written by a woman as by a man? (George Eliot came to mind.)

Clearly, it couldn’t have been better written.