The Outsiders is a novel based on an adolescent teen growing up in a Texas city. The teen, Ponyboy, who is without parents is raised by two older brothers. Ponyboy always hangs around with the group that his older brothers belong to. This group of post adolescent 18-20 year olds, are the somewhat misfit outcast greasers. The rival group or gang of the greasers in their hometown are the socs. The socs are the upper-class "jocks" of the high school who cause trouble, but remain in upstanding citizenship with the city. There is forever a clash between the two ga

Dallas who is on one hand harassing the girls, does offer them a soda. So in retrospect, he actually really likes them. So him harassing them is his way of attracting attention and almost flirting. This is a way of using one's body in another way, a sort of sexual language. One could argue that Dallas isn't using his body or physical self, but

This isn't just merely a story about two gangs and their fighting. It is the struggle of adolescence, the expression of the means of how the young adults deal with their emotions, by using physical force. The greasers and the socs feel superior to one another by who is stronger, or who can win in a fight. This poses a possible conflict of interest when you have young adults at this age fighting one another. You have people of all different body sizes and strengths all mixed in with each other. Ponyboy, who runs with the older crowd that is more developed and experienced in fighting than he is, can be over matched when he is mixed in as a greaser. When the socs look for a fight they see that he is a greaser and they don't care that he is of smaller build than them. After being jumped by a group of socs when he is all alone, Pony Boy reflects: "I'm kind of small for fourteen even though I have a good build, and those guys were bigger than me" (Hinton 4). Like Coles has said in his quote, the adolescent greets its new body with "reckless abandon". The socs showed no sympathy for that Ponyboy was smaller than they were. Ponyboy knowing that he is smaller than everyone does not use it as an excuse. He still does not want to be left out in the group.

Basically the novel is about coming to terms with why all of the young adults are fighting. The climax of the story is when the two gangs have a brawl. In the brawl the greasers prevail in the fight, as the socs fled the area. After the brawl though, everything isn't all fine and dandy. The struggle continues, the socs are still socs and the greasers are still greasers.

The socs and the greasers have many things that separate them from each other. At the age that the characters in the book are, they tend to choose who they are or what group they belong to. A soc or a greaser is easily identifiable. When Dally was harassing the girls at the drive-in Ponyboy knew that they were not greaser girls. "But these girls weren't our kind. They were tough looking g

Some common words found in the essay are:
Pony Boy, Outsiders Outsiders, Dallas Winston, Darry Pony, Dallas Dallas, Coles Coles, , Ponyboy Ponyboy, Robert Coles', pony boy, Pony's Ponyboy, socs greasers, reckless abandon, fall love dallas, greeting body, greasers socs, jumped socs, johnny pony, physical force, love dallas, johnny pony boy, body reckless abandon, fall love,
Approximate Word count = 1607
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)