The Outsiders Unfair

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In the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, it talks about a gang with not much money called the greasers, that goes up against a wealthy gang called the socs. The greasers have a big disadvantage here since they do not have very much money and can’t get off the hook as easily as the socs. Showing that the law is unfair for the greasers because they are poor. Dally gave Ponyboy and Johnny a gun and got put in jail for it. Johnny killed a guy in self defense, and said that if he ever got caught, he would get the electric chair, and if Ponyboy ever got caught he would be sent to the reformatory. When Dally was 10 years old he even got put in jail. This shows that the law is unfair because normal people doing something like that would not get something like the electric chair, or get put in jail at 10 years old, but because the greasers are poor, they usually get more harsh punishments. If the same things happened to the Socs, they probably would of gotten off without any punishment, a warning at the least. Ponyboy says that you can’t win against the socs no matter how hard you try, because they’ve got all the breaks. He is saying that there is no way to win against them …show more content…

Johnny killed a guy in self defense thinking he would get the electric chair. While the socs beat up many greasers and almost killed one without even having to worry about any punishments. In 2012 something similar happened when a kid named Ethan Couch killed 4 people, violated 5 laws, and only ended up with 10 years probation and rehab at a vacation resort. When S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders, she understood that there are many inequalities under the law that severely affected lower class and upper class people. These inequalities are still around today, as shown by the Ethan Couch situation. The law will never be equal across everyone unless people are punished equally instead of punished based on how much money they