The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

I think the Outsiders is an amazing book that brings to light to fact that whether you are rich or poor you will face problems. This a tale of a battle between the Socs (higher class people) and the greasers (lower class people) This book is one of those that can be shoved on a dusty shelf and never read because its not well known.

The Outsiders could be classed as romantic but it doesn't have one line of love running through it instead it's actually more to do with the rivalry between the socs and greasers and the heartache this causes for both sides. If you take this to a bigger scale this could represent war and the damage it does us on all sides.

The Outsiders is a short book so if you are not a big fan of reading it is a quick read and has a very griping story line. The main storyline is about friendship and sticking up for each other no matter what and that fighting or beating people up because they are a different social class than you doesn't change anything.

The greasers and socs in The Outsiders do smoke, drink, etc. but S.E. Hinton does manage to steer clear of most of this. One thing I noticed when reading the book was that the middle class people are the only ones who don't generally get drunk as they don't have enough money to waste and don't have so little money they want to drown their troubles.

I find it very easy to sympathise with the main character Ponyboy because he is so different from the other greasers, for example, he doesn't like fighting, he likes to read and he is enthusiastic about learning these are all good skills and so like Ponyboy, whatever your situation, I advise you all to stay gold.