Social Groups In S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders

In almost every situation, there is an unavoidable problem: being labeled into groups. Through S.E. Hinton’s high school life, she realized how social groups shaped everyone’s life, and she loathed it. The Outsiders is based off real events that take place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, S.E. Hinton’s hometown. The novel is based off two separate groups, the Greasers and the Socs. The plot is powerful and exhilarating, but it’s difficult to identify the true outsiders of the story. Even though both the Greasers and Socs seem like the outsiders at times, the true outsiders are a group of individuals that work beyond the boundaries of a Soc or Greaser.
It’s easy to see that the Greasers would be the outsiders of the story. One example was when Ponyboy was at school in biology. He took out a switchblade to dissect a worm since the knife wouldn’t cut. Pony didn’t consider this to be a strange or awkward notation in any way since it was a normal thing for him, but for the Socs, it was totally different. One of the Soc girls near him noticed and automatically assumed that he was a …show more content…
This is shown by Cherry when she and Ponyboy are talking about social status. Cherry reveals that Socs and Greasers aren’t as different as they originally thought they were. One large difference was the way they felt and how they showed emotions. Cherry told Pony that “Socs were always behind a wall of aloofness, careful not to let their real selves show through” (Doc C). What she means by this is that the Socs do and say all these things, but they never really think or feel it. They always have a tough reputation to keep up and emotions just weren’t accepted. The Greasers were different as they did have feelings and weren’t as stone faced as the Socs were. Cherry was inconsistent since she varied between typical Soc and an individual with feelings. She was open to Pony because, like Cherry, he was an outsider to his social