Kentucky Fried Connor

The outsiders

The novel the outsiders by S.E. Hinton, is an interesting book. The film version is similar in some aspects. The book takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1965, but it is never stated in the book. The story is about a bunch of teenagers in a gang, in a rivalry with another gang. The story is based on the ‘greasers’ and ‘socs’. The main character, ‘Ponyboy’ is a 14 year old boy that is the brother of ‘sodapop’ a 15 year old boy, and brother of, ‘Dallas Winston’ who is there caretaker, because their parents died when they were children. These boys are all greasers along with their friends; Johnny, dally, Darry and two- bit.

The story starts off with ponyboy waiting at the cinema, when a blue mustang full of socs appears. They chase him and end up pinning him down and ganging up on him. He gets cut on the throat in all the movement when they pull a blade to him. The greasers appear out of nowhere and scare the socs off. A bit further into the story, Ponyboy, Sodapop and dally are at the drive in, hitting on cherry and Marcia, two girls that they had just met. Dally is being mean to the girls and walks off. The girls tell ponyboy and sodapop that they are too nice to be greasers. They all walk off together, when the blue mustang appears, soda pulls out a butterfly knife, breaks a bottle and hands it to pony, but he does not know what to do with it. They are about to fight, but cherry does not allow it, she says she hates fights. Soda and Johnny walk to an area known as ‘the wasteland’ and lay on a mattress. Ponyboy falls asleep and has a dream about his parents.

Ponyboy walks home and Dallas is aggravated because they have been out all night. Dallas hits pony and he runs back to the wasteland and him and Johnny run away. They walk to a playground when the blue mustang once again turns up with the socs in it. They pick a fight and are trying to drown ponyboy. Johnny has no choice but to pull out a knife and he stabs a greaser known as Bob. When pony awakes, Johnny is sitting down next to him crying. Pony takes a look at the dead person lying in blood and Johnny tells him that he killed him. Pony goes away for a minute and throws up. The boys run to a pub to meet Darry or Dally (I can’t remember) and they go up to a room. He hands the boys a gun and gives pony a dry shirt, (because he was getting drowned in the fountain) and tells them that there is an old abandoned church on a hill.

 The movie version of the story skip out some parts, like a side story that is sodas pretend pet horse. Soda finds a horse named Mickey Mouse (which is why he is always wearing Mickey Mouse shirts in the movie) but it gets sold and he is devastated.

In general, I believe that the novel version is better because it is original, and it describes the characters better and doesn’t miss bits out. It is more likely to have people engaged in it.