The Outsiders Movie Vs Book

There is a wide range of critically acclaimed novels having a film adaptation to follow in their well-known footsteps, or might I say pages. The interpretation of a novel into a film can vary through the main plot scheme implied, details, and the perspective or angle both the director and the author wish to act upon for either their creative sake or for the appeal towards their implied audience. ‘The Outsiders’, written by S.E. Hinton, was created into a film roughly fifteen years after its first publication, during a different time period with a different viewpoint on social issues and literature. With that being said, the adaptation between the film and book versions of ‘The Outsiders’ share similarities and differ greatly due to the detailed

Hinton describes the Socs as, “the West-side rich kids. It's like the term "greaser," which is used to class all us boys on the East Side” (4). The film switches the location of each gang to the Socs belonging to the south side and the Greasers having the north end of the town. Interestingly enough, while pinpointing this key difference, I was reminded of a similarly movie with rivalry gangs from both the south and north sides of a town, ‘West Side Story’. This movie came out two years prior to Coppola’s adaptation of ‘The Outsiders’, and won countless awards, as well as received a large amount of praise from viewers and critics. This slight change in location could have been done due to ‘West Side Story’ acclaimed prominence, perhaps a business ordeal to boost sales and promotion due to a slight similarity from an award-winning movie. Although there is not a direct reasoning for this change in location, it is safe to assume its switch was to help engage a similar audience, which would bolster sales and acclaim for the film version of Hinton’s novel. A difference that is very noticeable right away within the film version of ‘The Outsiders’ is the lack of character development and details. Hinton dedicated well-written paragraphs, and in some instances, page full of descriptive elements to provide the reader a visual and emotional sense of each character. This allowed the audience to understand

In the novel, we learn that a teacher assigned Ponyboy to write a story, in which he does. His reasoning for writing ‘The Outsiders’ happens to stem from Dally’s death. Ponyboy attributes his story to all of the Dallys in the world, stating, “There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn't be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore. It was important to me.” (Hinton, 152). The movie fails to mention Ponyboy’s reasoning for writing this story. This allows the audience to interpret his writing in whichever way they seem fit, whether that be that Ponyboy realizes that gangs are not the way to live by, or that writing allows him to deal with the vast amount of death and hurt he has gone through in his sixteen years. This key and direct difference alters the ending and the final realization that Ponyboy has written this story into two different and unique portrayals of a critically acclaimed