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Vit Babenco's Reviews > The Outsiders
The Outsiders
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If the tale weren’t so naive and sentimental it would have charmed me.
Us versus them… He who isn’t with us is against us… Rebelliousness of youth…
Narrator is fourteen… He’s clever… He is the youngest of three brothers whose parents are dead… He’s in a gang… And if there is a gang there are adversaries…
He meets a girl from the other side…
Class hostility… Street enmity… Those things are prone to end up badly…
When we’re young we want the maximum of everything and often this desire becomes ruinous.
Us versus them… He who isn’t with us is against us… Rebelliousness of youth…
My hair is longer than a lot of boys wear theirs, squared off in back and long at the front and sides, but I am a greaser and most of my neighborhood rarely bothers to get a haircut. Besides, I look better with long hair.
Narrator is fourteen… He’s clever… He is the youngest of three brothers whose parents are dead… He’s in a gang… And if there is a gang there are adversaries…
Tough and tuff are two different words. Tough is the same as rough; tuff means cool, sharp – like a tuff-looking Mustang or a tuff record. In our neighborhood both are compliments.
He meets a girl from the other side…
It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.
Class hostility… Street enmity… Those things are prone to end up badly…
Young hoods – who would grow up to be old hoods. I’d never thought about it before, but they’d just get worse as they got older, not better.
When we’re young we want the maximum of everything and often this desire becomes ruinous.
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Reading Progress
May 14, 2025
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Started Reading
May 14, 2025
– Shelved
May 15, 2025
– Shelved as:
to-read
May 15, 2025
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Rose
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rated it 4 stars
May 15, 2025 12:59PM
I read this in junior high and loved it. I’m sure as an adult it’s a bit too childish.
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No rationality, just wishful thinking.
I sure did love this one when I was 12. Made my heart go pitter-pat.
Twelve is a right age for this book, probably.
But please - never forget, when it was written. It was another time, it was somehow the beginning of literature like this....
I once taught this book to a class of naughty teenage boys and I was very grateful to it as they absolutely loved it, making my job easier! They really bought into the romanticised rebellion stuff and we all enjoyed watching the Francis Ford Coppola film once we had finished reading. Then they went on to write lengthy essays about it for their coursework the likes of which were never seen from them before or since!
I believe I would like it when I was a boy.
Just revisited once again the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of 1983 starring Patrick Swayze and Matt Dillon. A riveting narrative marred only by the relative childishness of the mob gangs and their unending skirmishes. Never had the chance to read the book. I wonder if it is better than the movie adaptation....
Have you read Rumble Fish by the same author? I thought it was a somewhat better novel than The Outsiders, although I liked them both. Rumble Fish is a lot darker, a good counterpoint to The Outsiders, IMO. I think Francis Coppola's film adaptation of Rumble Fish was vastly better than his adaptation of The Outsiders.
Thank you, David. I’ve seen Rumble Fish and I didn’t like it. Now I think that even three stars for this novel are too much so I downgrade it to two stars.
