Life by Category

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
--Thoreau

S.E. Hinton’s book, The Outsiders, is a story about categories. We live our lives by category. It’s how we make sense of our world. We group things together into word categories, like “pencil” or “house” because they have common characteristics. This is a good thing. But we also group people. Usually, we group them into categories of “us” and “them.” “Them” are different: unknown and undesirable, hated, feared, and perhaps, envied. We often never truly see who “them” is, and we miss the fact that they are more like us than not.

The Outsiders was published in 1967, but the story is as up-to-date as yesterday or tomorrow because we have always had—and always will have—“us” and “them,” the in-groups and outsiders. In the book, it’s the socs (short for “socials”) vs. the greasers. When greasers look at socs, they see spoiled trouble-makers whose parents give them everything. They get all the breaks and the favor of the power-elite. They are destined for success. When Socs look at Greasers, they see hoods and losers. They don’t deserve a break. Yet the socs envy the greasers for their close families. The greasers express their feelings: they seem to feel alive.

Hinton uses the character of Ponyboy Curtis, a greaser, to tell the story. Ponyboy, fourteen, lives with his two older brothers Darry and Soda. Their parents are dead. They are part of a “gang” of greasers (but more like family) from New York’s East Side. Ponyboy is a sensitive young teen who reflects honestly and deeply on life, and vividly illustrates the angst of the young people in the greaser and soc category. He wants to read Gone With the Wind and knows poetry. Ponyboy has a chance conversation with a soc girl named Cherry, a kindred spirit who helps Ponyboy begin to truly see the socs and how alike socs and greasers are. He also learns about the soc envy of greasers. Greasers, at least, feel loved, while the socs cause trouble mostly to get attention from their parents. Hinton tantalizes her reader with the possibility of living beyond the categories. (Her insight is made more remarkable by the fact that she was only sixteen when she wrote the book).

But the plot, alas, is driven by a series of tragic events, events that ensure that most will remain locked in their categories. A fight leads to the death of a soc and Ponyboy and Johnny are forced to flee. In hiding, Pony remembers the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” which expresses perfectly something Johnny is trying to tell him. This so impresses Johnny that, before the end of the story, Johnny, injured and close to death, writes a letter that encourages Ponyboy to realize that he is still in his “gold” age and, before his golden youth is gone, has time to get outside his category—and maybe help others to do so as well.

Imagine what that would be like?