Outsiders Review: Andrew Marshall

The Outsiders Novel & Film Review

Outsiders Review

The Outsiders is a riveting story about a gang called ‘Greasers’ that are in a constant war with another gang called ‘Socials’ or ‘Socs’. The novel is the original source of the storyline and layout in which the film version is based. The novel was written by S. E. Hinton and first published in the United Kingdom in 1970. The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and was first released on March 25^th 1983.

The Outsiders begins with a young fourteen year old boy named Pony Boy, who is starting to begin a story of his past few months for his school English assignment. Pony Boy acts as a narrator throughout the story but does not become repetitive and does an excellent job of telling the audience of what is happening without giving away the plot.

The film has many flaws when it comes to having the same storyline as the book. Multiple characters, objects and ‘mini’ stories where either hardly mentioned or non-existent in the film. However the film does go into detail in events that are not shown in the novel, this means that the film does not follow the novel exactly.

The film is missing out many characters and does not show some of them as many times as they appear in the novel. For example, Soda Pop is Pony Boy’s brother that is only seen very few times in the film. Soda Pop is one of the main characters in the novel that should of appeared more often in the film.

The novel is incredibly better than the film because it goes into more depth during the story and shows more events that happen to the greasers and the socs. The film compared to the novel is a disappointment and is missing too many small parts of the story, that keeps on adding up to become a large hole in the storyline.

For example, during the novel a miniature story between a horse nicknamed ‘Mickey Mouse’ and Soda Pop are mentioned in heavy detail. The horse was not owned by Soda Pop, but always acted like it, by always giving Soda Pop love but become hostile when other people are around. Soda loved the horse and the horse loved him, so when the horse was sold, Soda Pop was devastated and fell into a deep depression. In the film, none of this story is shown or even mentioned, therefor leaving a gap in the storyline.

The novel is spine chilling and exiting while you read it and makes it difficult to put the book down. It is a must read novel that is a writing masterpiece, anyone interested in experiencing this riveting story should read the novel first, whether they enjoy reading or not.