Hero In S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders Or Greasers?

In the book The Outsiders, written by S. E. Hinton, Ponyboy, a fourteen year old boy who is a part of the “Greasers,” a gang that exists to help each other in the east side of Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives with his two older brothers and encounters both sides of the bitter rivalry between the “Socs” and the “Greasers. The novel focuses on the conflicts that arose among both gangs. The book also centers on the narrator, Ponyboy, and his journey with the “Greasers” and the “Socs.” The three topics addressed in this engaging novel are the fight between the rich and the poor, the power of friendship, and what it means to be a hero.
To begin with, the “Greasers” are visualized as the lower class hoodlums and unlettered group of individuals while the “Socs”
The fight between the rich and the poor is very important to the development in the book because it causes many of the bonds between the main characters (i.e. Johnny and Ponyboy) to strength. The power of friendship is relevant since it is the friendship between the gang members that makes them consider the lives of their friends before their own and forms a family-like emotional bond between them. Being a hero in the storyline also played a major role because it saved the lives of many people and formed a new profound trust among the characters. The strengths of the novel are that the way the book is written is easily understood, allowing deeper understanding of the text, there are many vivid descriptions of both characters and events, and it depicts how teenagers living on the “wrong side” of town behaved and felt in dire situations. The weaknesses of this novel are that after Johnny is admitted into the hospital, there isn’t a lot of contact with him until a few chapters late on, the majority of important events happen very quickly, and some of the character are left unexplained towards the end of the novel. The novel is a thrilling experience that tells the journey of a fourteen year old who was going through tough times. It provides an in-depth explanation of what life was like when in the eyes of a “Greaser” who was fighting a constant war with his emotions and the