S. E. Hinton

Ky Graham

English 249B

Prof Jayne

2/13/19 Due May 6

S. E. Hinton

S.E. Hinton was born in Oklahoma in 1948 under the name Susan Eloise Hinton. She wrote under her initials and last name so that her readers would assume she was male as she didn't think her readers would respond well to a female writing from a male's perspective. She started writing her first book, The Outsiders when she was 15, making the year 1962 which is around when the book takes place. The book was inspired by her actual high school and the gangs that ruled it. Beginning her writing career as a young adult is most likely what encouraged her to write for young adults, making her one of the pioneers of the genres. As she grew older it looks like she pretty much kept writing for that age range as well as doing a children’s book.

I have very vivid memories of the first time I picked up a copy of The Outsiders in the store and the first time I read it. I was browsing the small book section in Target and a cover with a leather jacket caught my eye. The summary on the back cover piqued my interest and it was inexpensive so I decided to buy it. At that time I hadn’t realized how well known it was and that it was taught in high schools because it wasn’t taught in mine. It was my senior year of high school and I worked as an office intern during my sixth period. I sat at the front desk answering the phone and directing anyone who walked in. I had a lot of downtime so I always had a book to read. I remember there was a stack of scraps of paper near me that I often used as bookmarks and I still have the bookmark I grabbed for, The Outsiders stuck in the book. I have loved The Outsiders every since and was excited to do this project because I’ve always wanted to read more of S.E. Hinton’s work but never got around to it. I also read That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish to get a sense of who S.E. Hinton is as a writer.

I noticed several common themes between the three. I was really excited that, That Was Then, This Is Now featured Ponyboy Curtis, the main and my favorite character from The Outsiders. Those two books are definitely in the same world and I think Rumble Fish could be as well but I didn’t find it explicitly said. All three books have an emphasis on class but to different degrees. The Outsiders had a very strict divide between the greasers/the hoods/ the poor/the east siders and the Socs/Socials/rich kids/the west siders. In That Was Then, This Is Now the main character notices less of a distinction between the groups, “...with all the love, peace and groove stuff...” (Hinton 70) and as the gangs begin to evolve in their expression. “Besides, it was hard now to tell a Soc from a greaser. Now the greasers wore their hair down on their foreheads instead of combed back… and the Socs were trying to look poor” (Hinton 70). Bryon, the main character and a greaser, went to parties and was friendly with Socs whereas in The Outsiders there was rarely any mixing of the two groups and if there where it came with violent consequences.

That Was Then, This Is Now also included the addition of a third group, the long hair peace sign wearing, hippies. One of the supporting characters gets mixed up with a group of hippies after running away from home. It seems the hippies were the group most involved in drugs as the character takes acid while staying at a hippie house and ends up in the hospital because of it. There was also some race conflict in this book that I didn’t notice in The Outsiders. While the main characters themselves don’t seem to have problems with people of color they notice it around them. The main character observes, “...integration in our school wasn’t really swinging yet, and there weren’t many negroes there.” (Hinton 71) They also meet someone in the hospital who was beaten up by a group of black men after he drove a black girl home who was being harassed by his gang.  

The girl was crying when she arrived and when asked if he hurt her she said, “‘Kill the white bastard.’” (Hinton 41) because even though he did nothing wrong she was so upset about her treatment by white people that she wanted a white person, any white person to be punished.

What I probably like most about S. E. Hinton’s books aside from her writing style are the greasers that she writes about. I love greasers. I love the hair and the leather jackets, I’ve been known to sport the trademark look on Halloween when I wasn’t working my way through all the Scooby-Doo characters. That is a different kind of gang. I was originally attracted to the cover of The Outsiders I first saw because of the leather jacket on the cover. I have since bought two other copies of The Outsiders because they have different covers, one of which is the fiftieth anniversary exclusive collectors edition that also has a leather jacket that has texture to it. I love movies like Grease and Cry Baby. I’m really attracted to the tough guy (or girl) in a leather jacket image. Have I mentioned leather jackets enough? Because I LOVE the leather jackets.

Rumble fish was my least favorite of the three books I read for this project because other than the gang violence and one mention that I can remember of the main character and his brother wearing leather jackets over white T-shirts there wasn’t a whole lot of the greaser culture that I love. I also didn’t find myself able to connect to the characters as much as I did with the other two books, possibly due to the short length, so when the tragic ending for the characters came I wasn’t as impacted by. Especially after reading That Was Then, This Is Now where I felt very connected to the main characters so I found the ending prett devastating. The ending of The Outsiders was also a bit upsetting but my favorite characters didn’t die so I wasn’t too upset an I liked the rest of the book so much that the ending didn’t ruin it for me.