The Outsiders Book Review Essay

The book “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton is a great book to analyze. The narrator of the book is the main character whose name is Ponyboy Curtis. Ponyboy, his brothers, and their close friends are greasers and their enemies are the socs. They are divided by their socioeconomic status. Ponyboy is a 14-year old boy whose life has been turned upside-down after the death of his parents and having to live with his oldest brother, Darry, who is 20 years old. His life turned even worse when he ran away from home with his best friend Johny. Ponyboy and Johny were being jumped by the socs when Johny was forced to kill one of the socs with his knife. Frightened to be executed by the law, Ponyboy and Johny run away from town with much worse to come. This is an engaging book because it shows how a teenager’s life can go bad in a matter of a couple of days.
The conflict of the book is that Ponyboy and Johny are hiding from getting arrested after Johny killed a soc, a rival of their greaser gang. After Ponyboy got into a heated argument with his older brother, Darry, he runs …show more content…
Hinton is to foreshadow to build suspense. Ponyboy is the narrator of the book and he is also the one writing it. Since he knows the ending of the whole story, he purposely builds suspense to spice things up throughout the book. The author uses foreshadowing when Ponyboy talks about how great the life of a soc can be. However, as he gets to know some of the socs, he notices that he is wrong as they can live the same struggles greasers do. The author also uses slang words that greasers use throughout the book. She uses words as “tuff”, “cooler”, and “cancer stick” to make the story sound as if young humans were writing the book. The author also finished the book with an emotional letter written by Johny for Ponyboy before he died. The letter made the story more emotional when Johny tells his best friend Ponyboy to take care of himself and to “stay