The Evaluation of The Outsiders as a form YAL The novel, The Outsiders written by S.E. Hinton is a harsh, realist portrayal of teenage life lived by real people with real problems. Although never mentioned in the book, the setting is based in Oklahoma. The vague setting of the book provides a dangerous, scary, disturbing, fun, intriguing and heart warming background. The book was controversial for it did not feature the common, light hearted, happy ending story that most young adult literature books had. The book was filled with various emotional depts, in regard to the characters and what they endured. True friendships, the death of parents, been emotionally and physically abused, violence, teenage pregnancy, been in a gang and other social issues was the focus of the book. Readers, parents, teachers and librarians had raged debates over The Outsiders and the too realistic nature of its content. Some argued that the book promoted teenage pregnancy, drugs and glorified gangs. At the time of writing the book, S.E. Hinton was a teenager herself. She was tired of reading books that were filled with clichés and fairy-tale endings. She wanted her readers to relate to the stories she wrote by using real …show more content…
The book has many themes such as the gap between the rich and poor, honour among the lawless and the retention of innocence. To society, The Greasers were looked down on, yet they we honourable and looked after one another and stood together when it came to their enemies. Their loyalty and devotion to each other in the gang was admirable because society would not have expected them as Greasers to have these quality traits. They took the blame for crimes they did not commit to save their friends and risked their lives to save children from burning to death in a fire in a