Conflict In The Outsiders

The Outsiders, written by the brilliant author S.E.Hinton is about the conflict between two rival gangs, the greasers, and the Socs. The main protagonist, Ponyboy is a greaser, who is portrayed as poor and distinguished by their greasy hair. Whereas the Socs is portrayed as rich and distinguished by their rich clothes and cars. The interesting part, however, is that Cherry Valance, a soc, described the Socs to be emotionless and apathetic, which led them to use violence to express their feelings. On the other side, Cherry characterized the greasers to be too emotional which led them to antagonize the Socs and causing conflicts. Throughout the book, the theme rich vs poor reflected the Socs and greasers. As the conflict continues, it slowly came to an end when the Socs became more humanized by the death of Bob.

As a gang, the greasers were always terrorized by the Socs which created many conflicts. For instance, Socs

To a certain extent the theme rich vs poor can also relate to society. For instance, because the first impressions of the “hood” are always bad, we just assume they are belligerent and bad. However, in reality, people that dress well and have an impressive demeanor is not always good. As people make these assumptions, they often do not see the dreadful and idiotic things they do. For example, Donald Trump had been accused of sexual harassment by eight women and there has been nothing done to help these women. Whereas, the “hoods” that were accused were taken seriously and often treated unfairly. As stated in the book, “It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we live weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.”, this quote expresses the idea that even though they seemed to be living in different worlds, they are all the