Social Issues In The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton is an American author known for creating a new theme in novels for teenagers. She comes from a time when social segregation plagued not only the youth but everyone in America. As the prejudice worsened, Hinton grew tired of the constant bullying of social classes and decided to write about the issue.In Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders”, she uses her personal life experiences and her early love for reading to revolutionize modern novels and create something teenagers can read, while relating to what they actually deal with outside of school.

She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where prejudice among social classes was very prominent. As a high school student she fit in with everyone but didn’t like how seperate everyone was. As tension
HIntons parents became separated when she was a young girl which causes a dramatic role in her work. In her book The Outsiders, there are no parent figures, or very few adults at that, in the lives of the greasers. This is what causes the reckless behavior of the greasers, which ,in turn, causes the divide between the two classes. The absence of any adult figures was addressed by Hinton as she wanted a place where kids could live on their own and be free to do what they wanted, which is exactly what the main characters in the story do but they eventually find out that not having adults can lead to some major problems. The division of her parents can also be seen as a hint at the division of social classes within the story and her real life experiences. Hintons early love for reading plays a definite role in her success as a writer. As a child she was a very private person and began to express her emotions in her writing instead of out loud. “She began to write more and more” her mother says “reading everything she could get her hands on.” This shows how as Hinton began to read more, it inspired her to write; and write she did, because in the middle of her junior year in high school she finished her first book The