The Outsiders
S.E. Hinton (1967)
“Written by a 16-year-old about teenagers killing teenagers — and the book that proved young adult fiction could be real literature.”
Characters in The Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton · 1967 · 7 characters analyzed
Cast: Ponyboy Curtis, Johnny Cade, Dallas Winston (Dally), Darry Curtis, Sodapop Curtis, Cherry Valance, Bob Sheldon.
Character Analysis
14 years old, orphaned, a reader and dreamer in a world that has decided readers can't be greasers. His central conflict is not with the Socs — it's with the gap between who he knows he is and who the world has decided he is. His narration is the novel's argument: greaser lives are worth recording. His greatest strength is empathy; his greatest limitation is that grief and loyalty sometimes make him see only what he can bear to see.
Greaser slang in conversation, literary language in narration — the gap between how he talks and how he thinks is the character's central tension.