The Outsiders- Middle Reading

So far this book is great. It is about two gangs, the socs and the greasers. They are rival gangs and are constantly fighting. The story is narrated by Ponyboy, who is one of the members of the greasers. The greasers are the lower class group, with many of them having to work hard in order to survive and a few of them either don't have parents (Ponyboy) or their parents are abusive (Johnny). The socs are the upperclass and normally start the fights with the greasers. One of the things that is really interesting about the book is that the author; S.E. Hinton uses different objects to distinguish the two groups. For example he uses cars to describe the groups. He makes sure when he is first introducing the people to mention their car in order for you to know how they are. One example of this is on page 76, “Shepard and some of his outfit and us were hanging around there when she drives up in her little ol’ Stingray.” By him mentioning the car, you can tell what group she belongs too. Along with this, the book is great; the plot itself is very interesting. It is similar to Catcher in the Rye because it is about a teen that is learning the ways of life and learning about how society acts. He also mentions his opinions on other characters, like Holden does, very frequently in the book. If you had given me these two books to read without me knowing the authors, after reading each one once without doing a large amount of analysis on either, I would think it is the same author.