Have you ever been bullied, harassed, or discriminated against? Morning/Afternoon Mrs.

Zubac and class

92, today I will be speaking about the three themes in the book, The Outsiders. The 3 themes I have
chosen are, stereotyping, violence, and empathy. The Outsiders is a novel that tells us the story of a 14yr
old boy, ponyboy Curtis, and his two older brothers, Sodapop and Darry. The boys are orphans who are
struggling to stick together with their gang while rebelling against their stereotypical, discriminated identity
and their rival gang, the socs.

Stereotypes are used in everyday situations and circumstances, in-jokes, movies, cartoons, and in
everyday language. An example of this is that girls with blonde hair are intelligent or, all men don't think
before they act. Stereotyping is a key issue in the text, this is illustrated through the quote, “We both need
a haircut and some decent clothes, they'll know were hoods the minute they see us!”. This quote conveys
that the community will depict them as criminals from their ‘Delinquent’ like appearance, however, Johnny
challenges the delinquent stereotype when he risked his life to save the lives of the boys in the fire.in the
quote “Listen, I don't mind dying now. It was worth it. It's worth saving those kids. Their lives are worth
more than mine. They have more to live for.” emotive language is used to highlight Johnny's heroic and
selfless nature. As you can see, Johnny plays a big role in the novel. He finds the life of children he
doesn't even know, worth more than his own. Johnny knows the value of life and he flights for those
around him, breaking the delinquent stereotype as he has done something heroic.

The Outsiders is a very violent Novel that showcases gang violence, child abuse, stabbings, shootings,
and all-out brawls. The violence on the book pushes the action on to the reader and explores the fact that,
in Blackburg, you can't walk the street alone, and if you do, you need protection, such as guns, knives, or
brass knuckles. “A fair fight isn’t enough… Blades are rough, so are chains and heaters and pool sticks
and rumbles. Skin fighting isn’t rough, it blows off steam better than anything else,’’, juxtaposition is used
in this quote to compare and highlight the difference between a fair fight and a tough fight. The harsh
reality of the novel is that they live in a society where guns, knives, etc, are normalized. A rhetorical
question is used in the quote, “ People got hurt in rumbles, maybe killed, I’m sick of it, it doesn’t do us any
good, you can’t win, you know that don’t you?”, to emphasize that fighting is dangerous and how sick of it
dally was.

In the text we figure out that the greasers and the socs are not so different at all,” Things are rough all
over”, Negative connotations are used in the word ‘rough’ to create the image that both the greasers and
the socs are both going through there fair share of problems. To further evidence this concept, S.E Hinton
cleverly implements juxtaposition in the quote “It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her
patio and the sunset I saw from the back steps were the same.”, to show us that they see themselves in a
different world from each other and this scene in the novel brings those two worlds together to form one.

In conclusion, the Curtis family, the Greasers, and the Socials are more like each other than they think.
There both Violent- the socs jumping the greasers and the greasers jumping the socs, stereotypical- the
socs being able to breeze through things with their money or the being greasers delinquents with bad
attitudes. there both empathetic of one another in there gang, with the revenge of bob and the brutal
bashing of johnny, and The audience learns that violence leads to more violence and that you should not
judge a book by its cover.