Who is the Outsider?

Who is the Outsider? What is an outsider? We usually think an outsider is a person that walks around, does not talk to anyone, stays away from the crowd huddle, and does not care what the “insiders” think or do. But what if the usual insider was actually the outsider? What if the person we think is the outsider is doing the real norm?

In the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, the author never used the word outsider. She probably wanted the readers to ponder who the outsiders really are. My definition of an outsider is a person that is not in a group or (what I think) is not supposed to be in a specific group. After a long time thinking about which characters I think are the outsiders of the novel, I finally came up with a reasonable answer. I think the real outsiders are Darry, Ponyboy, Johnny, Randy, and Cherry.

So why do I think these characters from the book were the outsiders? First, I think Darry is an outsider because he is not supposed to really be a greaser. His brother, Ponyboy, even said it himself! After the Curtis brothers’ parents’ death, Darry had a decision to make. He either had to take care of Ponyboy and Sodapop or he could have put his brothers in a boys’ home. The only reason Darry is a greaser is because his two brothers are holding him back. If he had let his brothers go, Darry could have gone to college, get a high-paying job, and he could have either been middle-class or even a soc.

I think Ponyboy is an outsider to the greasers because he was more of an emotional person and had more knowledge than the others in the gang did. He was still in school, he watched sunsets, and he also had a writing talent to him too. He was also friendlier to the socs than anyone else in the novel. He was also one of the heroes in the story when his “kind” was not common for being the hero, but the criminal. The other hero