I was shocked by how poorly written this book is until I found out that Hinton was 15-16 when she wrote this. Then it all made sense and credit to her for publishing at such a young age.
But this book is terrible, and I’m surprised by how widely recommended this book is in general and taught in schools.
For all the flak that men get for writing terrible female characters, this book takes the cake for the worst written boy characters.
Real boys don’t act or talk like characters in *The Outsiders*. Even accounting for setting (60’s in Oklahoma), I’m sure boys did not talk like this. This was like reading a long wattpad story of how a 16 year old girl thinks boys act and talk. Johnny’s and Dally’s death had no impact on me because they did not see like real people.
Maybe the themes she wrote about like class differences, preservation of innocence, and being different were fresh ideas at the time. But there’s gotta be many better YA books by now that touch the same subjects and are actually written well.
I recognize that she was young when she wrote this and YA wasn’t really a thing back then.
by BlacknWhiteMoose
2 Comments
She was actually 18 when she finished it up for publication so it’s not that early. That said I disagree, you can tell a teen wrote it and it has some of the like 1960’s version of Wattpad syndrome for sure, but overall it’s quite well written IMO. Who says boys don’t talk like that? They were mostly normal and I found them pretty believable beyond the usual novel treatment of making them larger than life.
I think it manages to portray a group of realistic teenage boys who deal with their emotions in varying degrees of unhealthy, leaving a lot of it to subtext which is actually pretty impressive for a teenage writer. It’s still Young Adult so it’s not like Peak of Literature level but it both caters well to its intended audience while having enough depth to engage adults as well. The prose is also quite competent even if it has a couple of cringe moments.
I actually think it’s much better than a lot of more modern YA stuff because it wasn’t written to be exclusively YA – it was a novel first and YA second due to the genre not really being a big thing at the time. Most modern YA novels are YA first and a novel second, if that makes sense. She’s not trying to make some 2000’s era internet hyper action romp for teenagers she’s writing a thoughtful analysis on people and their suffering.
I also find the idea that “class differences” and “innocence” being trite themes a little absurd. Critically acclaimed works from 2022 and 2023 deal with these themes because they’re timeless.
How do you know people in the 60’s didn’t talk like that? Where you think she got her inspiration from?