The Outsiders Movie Vs Book

The Outsiders was written in the 1960’s to describe the struggle between the upper and lower classes in that time period. S. E. Hinton, the author of the book, wrote it when she was in high school and published the book when she was a freshman at the University of Tulsa. She became known as “The Voice of the Youth”. This pressure brought her writer’s block that lasted three years. Hinton broke the block by writing two pages a day, which led to her next novel, That Was Then, This Is Now. She has since written various other novels and many different awards. The Outsiders remained popular, and Francis Ford Coppola directed a movie based off of the book in the 1980’s. The book The Outsiders is both similar and different to the movie version, but the book version is superior. In both the movie and the book, the basic plot is the same. Ponyboy Curtis is 14-year-old orphaned Greaser, with two older brothers who care for him, Soda and Darry. Soda is described as a “movie-star kind of handsome, the kind that people stop on the street to watch go by” (Hinton 7) and seems to be understanding and reckless at the same time. Darry, on the other hand, is broad and muscular, but does not understand Pony in the way Soda does. On one occasion, Darry slaps Pony because he was out in the vacant lot too long, and Pony decides to run away with a member of his gang, Johnny. Johnny ends up killing a Soc because him and his associates almost drowned Ponyboy. After that event, Pony and Johnny enlists another member of their gang, Dally, to help them escape their punishment. Dally helps the boys escape to the country, where Johnny and Dally get burnt badly saving a bunch of children from a flaming building. When they come home, they find that the Socs and Greasers have decided to fight out their differences in a rumble. The Greasers won, but that still does not solve all of their problems. Johnny dies in the hospital, and Dally kills himself, because Johnny was the only thing he truly cared about. Ponyboy decides to write about his …show more content…
It discusses how Johnny was beat up: “Johnny’s face was cut up and bruised and swollen, and there was a wide gash from his temple to his cheekbone” (Hinton 32). This experience gave Johnny a scared and cautious demeanor. The book version also talks about Soda’s relationship to his girlfriend Sandy. Once Pony and Johnny get home, Pony is required to go to court, not only about the murder, but the possibility of him going to a boy’s home. All of these points are mentioned in the …show more content…
Both the book and the movie are amazing and recommended, however the book outranks the movie in the those ways. The book contains considerably more details than the book, which makes reading it much more interesting and relatable. There is more emotion and fewer gaps in the plot, because every aspect is discussed in considerable detail in the book. As with all movies, you cannot hear the character’s thoughts, so you are unable to earn a deep understanding of the character. These way make the book much more entertaining to the reader than the