The Outsiders (realistic fiction)

The Outsiders

By: S.E. Hinton

This book is about a group of boys, and the narrator, Ponyboy, and their lives living on the wrong side of the tracks. It is a coming of age book, and the teme is about their loss of innocence. This story takes place in the Southwest, but never actually gives a place. There is an ongoing fued between the rich and the poor, Eastside verses Westside, and Ponyboy is on the East side, the greaser side. The feud truns into a fight, and Ponyboy and some another greaser end up killing one of the opposite side, the socialites. The main character deals with death and loss of friends, an his innocence, and the struggle to stay "golden."

The book uses a lot of imagery and symbolism instead of illustrations, and the imagery will actuall take you to the scenes, and build the background relationships between the characters, something the movie just could not capture. The characters are Ponyboy, SodaPop, Darry, Two-Bit, Steve, Dally, and Johnny. This is considered realistic fiction, because our textbook says these are events that could happen, they depict people who could be real (Galda, 2010). The setting is a Southwest town, in Oklahoma. The plot is the life of a greaser boy trying to survive. This book was published in 1967, and was written by a 15 year old girl.

Some activities that can go along with realistic fiction are to have the children do a scrapbook of the charcters, what are there likes, names, images that you relate to them, and have them pick a charcter per group, or assign so each character gets a scrapbook page. They should come up with, how they are related to the main character, where they fit it the story...what is their story within the story, and images to depict how they feel he/she looks. Another idea is to create, as a class your own realistic story. Come up with a realistic setting, character(s), plot, theme, storyline, etc. and as a class write your own story, that could be real, set in our time.

Resources:

Galda, L., Cullinan, B. E., & Sipe, L. R. (2010). Literature and the child (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworths, Inc.

Hinton, S.E. (1967). The Outsiders. New York. Viking Press.