Honors English 12

Chris Ahounou
Period: 5

The Outsiders book reflection

The novel The Outsiders by S.E Hinton is an incredible story about two conflicting
bodies of society and how social interactions between the two often led to violence and
further misunderstanding. I chose this particular novel for my reflection because it had a
significant psychological impact on me. The author S.E Hinton does an amazing job of
portraying the inner thoughts and feelings of the various characters which made me feel closer
to them. The Greasers, who represent the lower end of the economic scale are often ridiculed
by the Socs because of their poor background. The Socs represent the affluent upper middle
class teenagers who found pleasure in mocking those who were "different". The reason why
this novel had such an impact on me was because although the two groups had economic
differences, they both lived relatable lives and had common fears, dreams, goals etc. A key
scene in the novel was when Ponyboy Curtis, a greaser, and Cherry Valence, a Soc, discussed
extensively about their shared passions. I observed that this temporary human connection
quickly closed an invisible gap between them. This book is important to me because as we
grow older we see many different people from all sorts of backgrounds and upbringings and
its easy for us to put people in a box and categorize them. An example of categorization in this
novel is by economical status however we categorize people by their race, education, gender,
sexual orientation, and political/religious views on a daily basis. Developing a human
connection by interacting with others openly despite conflicting views and differences help us
understand their viewpoints. A lesson I took from this novel is that the hardships we face in
life may take different forms but we mustn't forget that at the end of the day we are all the
same.