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English Year 10 - The Outsiders: Context

A selection of resources regarding 'The Outsiders' to support Year 10 students.

S E Hinton

"Fifty years ago, a teenager wrote the best selling young adult novel of all time"

This article, written by Anna Godbersen for Timeline, discusses how 19 year old Susan Eloise Hinton wrote about a group of her friends in 1967, and how the novel has endured for over five decades.

S.E Hinton



"The Outsiders: 40 Years Later"

This article, written by Dale Peck for The New York Times, discusses the novel on its 40th anniversary.

At a time when the average young-adult novel was, in Hinton’s characterization, “Mary Jane went to the prom,” “The Outsiders” shocked readers with its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and “rumbling.” Although other pop culture offerings had dealt with these themes — most notably “Rebel Without a Cause” and “West Side Story” — their intended audience was adult. By contrast, “The Outsiders” was a story “for teenagers, about teenagers, written by a teenager"...

Context

         

Historical and Social Context

  • Gang Membership - by the late 1960s to early 1970s, gang activity that had begun in big cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles began to spread to the southern region of the United States. However, these gangs, primarily composed of young males of varying ethnicities, remained relatively small and dispersed in the beginning.
  • Birth of Young Adult Literature - The Outsiders is often considered the first young adult (YA) novel. Bridging the gap between children's and adult fiction, YA novels tend to feature young characters, usually adolescents, and focus on their challenges and changes. 
  • Literary and Film Influences - Gone With the Wind and Rebel Without a Cause a just a few of Hinton's influences for The Outsiders
  • Greasers - Sometime around 1950 a motorcycle club in a small town in California gripped filmmaker Stanley Kramer’s imagination. It inspired him to make a film in 1953 called “The Wild One”, which starred Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin as two crazy bikers who terrorize a small town. Their uniform and motorcycles rejected society’s accepted norms. The loud motorbikes, the short, black leather flight jackets, the jeans and white t-shirts all became the symbol style for anyone called a “greaser.”
  • Cars in the 1960s - in 1960, car buyers were demanding smaller vehicles. Compact cars were marketed heavily by every automobile manufacturer, in stark contrast to the 1950s. New models included the Ford Falcon, the Chevrolet Corvair and the Plymouth Valiant. 
  • 1960s Fashion 
  • The movies people watched in the 1950s - Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Sophia Loren were some of the hottest names in show business.