Amitej Babra

Core 2
Language Arts
Compelling Conflicts

The novel The Outsiders is an interesting and unique story. I haven’t read many
like this one and what really makes it interesting is how deep and compelling the
conflicts are. The author S.E Hinton makes the conflicts compelling and interesting by
creating bad odds for the greasers. There are many ways to prove it and three of them
are that she causes the two groups to be extremely hateful of each other, she makes
them financially unstable, and she lets Johnny be blamed for murder when he was
defending himself.
One example of S.E Hinton’s compelling conflicts is the fact that the two groups
are against each other. The socs are rich, they have more resources such as a
switchblade. At the start while Ponyboy walks home from the movies he is encountered
by some Socs. “‘ Need a haircut greaser?’ the medium sized blond pulled a knife out of
his back pocket and flipped the blade open” (Hinton 5). This is compelling because it
makes the reader want to know what he will do with the knife. And the odds are bad for
Ponyboy the greaser because he is being threatened by someone bigger than him who
has a switchblade. This shows that making the odds bad for greasers creates a
compelling conflict because it really pushes you to read ahead and you want to know
what happens to the greasers.
Another example of the author’s absorbing conflicts is that the greasers are
financially unstable. At the start, when Ponyboy is describing his life, he says “ We’re
poorer than the Socs and the middle class” (Hinton 3). This proves that they are pretty
poor. He also says “Since mom and dad were killed in an auto wreck the three of us got
to stay together as long as we behave”(Hinton 3). This shows that they really don’t have
anything. Firstly, they are poor and after that they don’t have parents to provide them
with anything. With life being tough and the greasers not having money S.E. Hinton
makes the odds bad for the greasers once again and in this case it is compelling to read
because the reader starts to sympathize with the greasers and starts to wonder how
they will manage.
Lastly, the final example of S.E Hinton’s compelling conflict is that Johnny killed
Bob.“They [The Socs] were drowning you, Pony. They might have killed you. And they
had a blade. They were going to beat me [Johnny] up” (Hinton 57). Bob was causing
harm for Ponyboy and could have killed him. It seemed like self defense and Johnny
even claimed it was and that he hadn’t planned to hurt Bob later in the story. The odds
was very unfairly against greasers in this because they were titled “Juvenile
Delinquents” and the police was after them for murder. They probably wouldn’t have
even gotten a fair trial because the judge would have no reason to believe Johnny
without any proof. This is compelling because having the greasers being blamed for
something they aren’t made me sympathize and want to read to see what would happen
to Johnny and Ponyboy.
These three conflicts shows that S.E Hinton has created some really compelling
conflicts mostly bad for the greasers, and no matter how tough they were, the greasers
overcame them and persevered through every problem