Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Outsiders



This week I read The Outsiders which was written by a then 18 year old S.E Hinton. The Outsiders is a coming of age novel about two rival groups of teens, The Greasers and The Socs, who live on the opposite sides of town.

The main character Ponyboy and his friend Johnny find themselves in trouble when they kill one of The Socs after getting jumped by them. At that age they know nothing more than the streets and decide to run away with the help of a fellow Greaser.

 Ultimately, Johnny the killer decides to turn himself in. Headed for home they see a burning church with children stuck inside. The Greasers run into save them but the flames get the best of Johnny.

Once home, The Greasers visit Johnny in the hospital consecutively until the night he passes away.

Meanwhile, the rival between the two gangs is heating up and a big fight is planned between all of the gang members. The Greasers win and everything is ok until one of the Greasers gets into trouble and is killed by the police. The Greasers are devastated for their two losses.  

Once Ponyboy returns to school he is in danger of failing. The story ends with him deciding to write a theme based on Johnny’s note he found in his favorite book “Gone with the Wind.”

This was a great book for me as it let me reminisce to my middle school days where I first fell in love with the story. It’s a perfect teen novel that deals with friendships, rocky home lives and death. It taught me about loyalty and love and I wasn’t surprised when I found myself downloading the movie yesterday to finish off this literature circle.



I could definitely see a classroom being taught a lesson using the student centered theories we learned about in chapter three. I feel that students would not necessarily relate to the story but definitely find it interesting and actually want to do work on it. I think this eventful story would benefit the students if they took the idea of using sticky notes to mark all of the important events and make notes.

2 comments:

  1. Mabelyn, I'm glad you have an attachment to the book! Your passion for it will be infectious when you teach it one day to your own students. Beware of the trap of summary and evaluation, however-- your posts consists mostly of a plot summary and your judgment of whether the book was good or not. You dedicate only a brief paragraph to tying in what you learned in Beach, though, when really this is the part I'd be most interested in as a teacher. What objectives might you set in teaching this book? And as Beach puts it, how would you get there? A brief allusion to the sticky notes activity doesn't quite cut it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. P.S. Great use of images in your blog post-- it made me want to see the movie :)

    ReplyDelete