I just finished reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, a book many people my age and older probably read in high school, but I never did. I was sitting at lunch discussing books with my coworkers and two of them said this was there favorite book. Then one brought it to me the next day. It's a short read and a compelling story. It built off of the last book I read Same Kind of Different As Me, because both of these books have a "we are all people" theme. Outsiders is dealing with teenagers that go to the same schools, but are from different social classes and parts of town. Same As Me (for short) deals with the homeless and social elite and how they find common ground. I'm enjoying this theme, because unfortunately my mind builds barriers between people based on what we look like, how we act, where we live, and the list goes on and on and confronting this wrong thinking is really refreshing.
Here are a few passages to get you hooked and make you read it if you never have before:
A poem that is important to the book..Robert Frost...
"Nature's first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."
It means more if you read the book (so good)!
"Cherry no longer looked sick, only sad. 'I'll bet you think the Socs have it made. The rich kids, the West-side Socs. I'll tell you something, Ponyboy, and it may come as a surprise. We have troubles you've never even heard of. You want to know something?' She looked me straight in the eye. 'Things are rough all over.'"
I think this is a good challenge to think about where others are coming from...not to sound too after school special, but we really don't know what anyone else's life is like.
"Most parents would be proud of a kid like that--good-lookin' and smart and everything, but they gave in to him all the time. He kept trying to make someone say 'no' and they never did. They never did. That was what he wanted. For someone to tell him 'no'. To have somebody lay down the law, set the limits, give him something solid to stand on. That's what we all want, really."
I think this is a beautiful description of America's downfall. We all think we want what we want and no limits, but really that leads to destruction. If all we ever get is exactly what we want; then we end up self absorbed and all of our relationships suffer. We all need limits and that was what God was doing in the Old Testament; he was saying I love you and these things, if you mess with them, they will hurt you.
Ok, this is my last passage...sorry I know I am a little carried away...
"They looked like they were all cut from the same piece of cloth: clean shaven with semi-Beatle haircuts, wearing striped or checkered shirts with light-red or tan-colored jackets or madras ski jackets. They could just as easily have been going to the movies as to a rumble. That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around- half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean---but people usually go by looks.
Ok you are either intrigued or bored, but either way that's enough!
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