Differences Between The Outsiders And The Greasers

Improved Essays
S. E. Hilton’s novel and popular film The Outsiders expresses a variety of internal and external conflicts including the main conflict in the novel, which is the division and struggle among social class. The two groups, Socs and Greasers, are drastically different, but also similar in a variety of ways. Socs and the Greasers are merely adolescents struggling with personal and social complications that unfold within society. As the greasers are portrayed as low-life scum no-good-for-nothing-dirt-bags, and on the other hand, Socs are depicted as privileged rich kids who catch all the “big breaks.” What determines to where each member of society belongs which group is the individual’s appearance and finance. Cherry, a popular Socs makes a statement …show more content…
Gone with the Wind focused towards social conflict and division between two parties (The North and the South) that resulted in many deaths and left the South utterly demolished. Likewise, with the Greasers, they are also fighting for their place on the social hierarchy and for the reason to take a stand against social injustice. Gone with the Wind and the poem Stay Gold are connected and linked by Johnny’s death. Johnny leaves a letter inside the novel, which refers back to the poem; linking the two literature pieces together for Ponyboy. While Johnny was in the hospital, he wrote a goodbye letter to Ponyboy that encourages him stay gold; referring to the poem Robert Frost wrote, which is used as a symbol to indicate the boys are coming of age. Correspondingly, coming of age is the main theme in the novel that Ponyboy struggled intensely with, that regards to reasonability, maturity and …show more content…
Separated by rich and poor, these young adults each struggled with personal complications and society’s disputes that influenced them to carry the hatchet on. Cherry and Ponyboy raised against all odds, and merged a friendship with one another. Correspondingly, both parties were sincerely passionate about the ongoing feud; another similar trait both groups possessed. Although, the conflict of two social groups prevented them from viewing how similar they actually were, the audience can gather that Ponyboy finally buried his own personal hatchet after he read the letter Johnny left. The two young groups struggled with clash of social class, internal and external conflicts played an enormous role on the young party’s members, and the two diverse groups are similar in a variation of

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    The book, The Outsiders, is about a constant battle between a group of west side rich kids, called socs, and east side poor kids, called greasers. The socs are always jumping the greasers and beating them up but they never get caught because they have rich parents and are high up in society. Throughout the book it gives details on the struggles that the kids with no money have to go through every day. It also gives insight into the true motives and feelings of people and how not everything is perfect, even for the people who seem to have it that way This book is told from the view point of a fourteen year old greaser named Ponyboy Curtis.…

    • 1230 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders was written when the author was sixteen years old and attending high school. She witnessed the struggles of her peers, especially the violence between the different social class gangs, in school and began to write about them. The Outsiders began as a simple short story and quickly flourished into a novel due to Hinton’s irate state of mind regarding her own life. Her writing became a way to cope and work through her feelings about the violent situations surrounding her life.…

    • 1208 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Greasers and Socs are stereotyped. The Greasers are the poorer people that live in the ghettos on the east side and they also slick their hair back with grease. The Socs are the rich people that live on the west side and have everything they want, good grades, cars, and the ability to get away with almost anything. The greasers are stereotyped as the violent hoods and criminal, whereas the Socs are seen as the smart, athletic kids. When talking about, The Outsiders, stereotypes influence and change the way people act.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Outsiders Life Lessons

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Outsiders by author S.E. Hinton withholds many life lessons, one of them being that fighting doesn't solve your problems. This story follows the lifestyles of the hoods on the east side of a small town in Oklahoma during the 60s. These hoods are called Greasers and are viewed like this because of their rebellious attitudes, disrespectful criminal behaviors, slicked hair, and poor economic status. The teens of this town are separated by money and lifestyles these guys have a tough life and they have to struggle meanwhile on the west side live the Socs who are proud and loaded with more money than they could ever ask for. The Socs are defined as rich, poised, madras wearing and mustang driving instigators who get everything handed to…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After the movie, the main character Ponyboy (a Greaser), and his friends ‘gallantly offered to walk’ (37) Cherry and Marcia home. Two Socs pull up in a blue Mustang and come out the car threatening Ponyboy and his friends for hanging around their girlfriends. Two-Bit, who is a greaser, made the situation worse when he “reached in his back pocket and flipped out his switchblade.” (45) Although the Socials threatened them by saying “Listen, greasers, we got four more of us in the back…”(45) Pulling out your pocket knife isn’t the smartest decision in this…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Outsiders Essay Are the Greasers and the Socs really that different or are they more alike that they realize? Greasers are a gang of kids, who live on the East side, that banded together because of a series if likenesses that they share. Socs are a bunch of rich kids who live on the Southside and have all the best cars, clothes, and alcohol possible. These two groups think that they are different, but their similarities outweigh their differences in 180 pages of literature by S.E. Hinton. Even though Greasers and Socs come from different worlds and have different problems they have more in common than they think.…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Outsiders Themes

    • 543 Words
    • 3 Pages

    He’s just a guy”, which made me, as a reader, realize that this could be a turning point for Pony. And even after that, we continue to see Ponyboy viewing the Socs as just guys and not total bitter enemies anymore by him continuously asking himself “why do I fight?” before The Big Rumble with the Socs. And my final example for this theme is how much each of the characters changed in the story; for example, Darry. At the beginning of the book, Pony referred to Darry as his annoying and mean older brother that’s constantly nagging on him, but towards the end, Pony and Darry’s relationship started to get better by the two finally listening and communicating with each other, and Pony seeing Darry finally as a friend rather than a foe.…

    • 543 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the course of Hinton’s novel ‘The Outsiders’, the ‘Greaser gang’ who live on the east side of town, were commonly standardised as juvenile delinquents, who struggled to make a living as a result of being and impecunious and underprivileged, yet persevered to value companionship over accessories. The Greaser gang have it rough. Living amongst the Socs in a society where they were characterised as being “poorer than the Socs and the middle class ” (page 3), Hinton makes it clear to the reader that the struggles of being a Greaser were often associated with difficulties because of financial status. Traumatic experiences that shaped the members of the Greasers, including the likes of Johnny, where “his father was always beating him up” (page…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    How can two boys with such similar lives, be so different in so many ways? How can two people who have grown up the same exact way, see the world in an opposite mindset? Well as for Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston, that is the issue. In S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Johnny and Dally both have awful parents, which causes them to place little value on their lives. Contrariwise, Johnny and Dally see the world differently, leaving the impression of people seeing them in different perspectives.…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton tells the tale of 2 gangs, the stuck-up, rich socs, and the rough, impoverished greasers. Pony thinks that greasers are the only ones that have it hard, and that they’re the only ones with problems. He then talks with his family who agrees, but friends who don’t. He proceeds to go to the movies and meet a girl named Cherry who talks to him about socs lives. Pony then decides to learn more and realizes that even if you’re given whatever you want, that you will still have problems.…

    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stereotypes are everywhere in the world. Today many major groups of people are still being stereotyped due to certain events that are being witnessed around the world. In The Outsiders, there are two groups of people. They are socs and greasers. They are groups of people that stereotype each other.…

    • 1419 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What’s The Difference? In the book, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, Greasers and Socs don’t exactly see eye to eye with each other. They have their differences, but doesn’t everyone?…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Almost everyone through hardships that changes their view of the world and their surroundings. In The Outsiders, a group of tight knit friends realize that the people they love the most can disappear in the blink of an eye. This group of friends, labeled the Greasers for their greasy hair, have an intense rivalry with another group, the Socs. One night, a bad choice leaves a couple of the Greasers running in hopes of escaping all of their issues. However, life catches up with this gang when the rivalry ends up causing deaths and other misfortunate events.…

    • 155 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In her novel The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton explores the theme that stereotypes are unfair and that therefore, one cannot judge an entire group of people based on these prejudices. A person is more than just a product of their community or circumstances, which is seen to be true in the characters of Johnny and Ponyboy. The Outsiders has two types of people, there are Greasers and Socs. The Greasers were the middle class unlike the soc who are more rich and Greasers are more wilder.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Identity In The Outsiders

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages

    How do the challenges faced with forming relationships affect people's true identity and their actions toward others? Many people may be wondering about this question. People have many different challenges to worry about when forming relationships. True identity, stereotypes, and society could be three of the main ones. In the book, The Outsiders, many characters worry about their social class and where they “fit in” in order to see their true identity.…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays