The Outsiders

The author S.E.Hinton uses extreme events to make the argument that given a chance; even those labelled ‘bad’ by society can do good. In the novel The Outsiders the characters that are labelled bad greasers who are placed in challenging situations. Those situations demonstrate that people are not always what they are labelled. S.E.Hinton uses her characters and their actions to persuade us that you cannot label someone until you know them and what they have been through. The novel demonstrates that people labelled bad often do good things. It is the most trying times that really test a person’s character. Will they do the right thing or will they act selfishly and do the wrong thing? It is these actions, not society’s labels that determine if people are good.
In The Outsiders the characters are placed in situations to prove that people are not always what they are labelled. Teenage brothers Ponyboy, Sodapop and Darry are outsiders. They are known as greasers and carry the labels of thugs, fighters, rebels, outcasts and trash. When their parents die, Darry (who is 18) is put in a challenging situation. Darry could choose to put his younger brothers in a home. Darry wanted to keep the family together so he took on the two boys as their guardian instead. Darry had recently been granted an athletic scholarship to attend college. Darry could have put the boys in a boys home and got himself through college. This action could have been easily justified. Darry had just experienced a tragic event. He is grieving his parents death and feeling helpless. He could also justify college as being necessary to get himself a good job. Did Darry choose this option? No, instead Darry got two jobs to support his brothers. He worked hard so he could send Ponyboy to college and get the opportunity he missed out on “‘Listen, with your brains and grades you could get a scholarship, and we could put you through college’.” (Page 124). Darry was known as a ‘greaser’, a bad boy, a trouble