A Ghetto Fairytale: Gangs and the Real Life SE Hinton

Written by a sixteen-year-old in 1967, the young adult novel The Outsiders is as well-ready by kids today as it was more than four decades ago. Teachers use this book as part of their English or Reading curriculum. Its been made into a movie and a mini-series. At one point, citizens of one city actually used The Outsiders as a supporting fact for their attempts to impose a curfew on minors. Many have felt that the author created a window into the world of young "Greasers" from the wrong side of the tracks. Ut how accurate was that window? SE Hinton wrote with a lot of insight into the teenaged psyche, considering she was only a teen herself. But The Outsiders was almost too fantastic to be realistic. It may be more of a ghetto fairytale than a truthful depiction of gang life in the 1960's.

The story of SE Hinton is, itself, somewhat of a myth. Not too much is known about Hinton's life, and when The Outsiders was first published, even less was known. One reviewer described the book as being written by a seventeen-year-old whose "Best friends" were Greasers. Another popular theory was that SE Hinton was actually a Greaser herself, possibly the real Ponyboy. Because the book was published using only Hinton's initials, it was easy to picture the author being a young man. As The Outsiders became more popular, Hinton actually received letters addressed to Ponyboy. The misled readers asked Ponyboy to join motorcycle gangs, proposed marriage, and simply anted to talk or ask advice.

One English Literature teacher heard a story about Hinton that was so well-known, she presented it to her students as a fact. She'd heard that Hinton was walking through a park in Tulsa one afternoon, and came upon a rumble between Greasers and Socs. Legend had it that Hinton witnessed a boy get killed, and she was so traumatized, she ran home and "wrote it out of her system," completing the entire manuscript of The Outsiders in one night.

Other myths depicted Hinton as a "teenage publication machine." A Tulsa newspaper told a story claiming that, to get information for her books. Hinton would interrogate people with "a method that would chill the blood of the most hard-bitten crime reporter." The story said that Hinton carried a switch blade to get the attention of the Greasers she spoke to.

None of these myths about Hinton are true. In reality, Susan Eloise Hinton was a shy teenager who attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. At the time, "Greasers" and "Socs" were separated by thick social and economic lines. Hinton herself was not a Greaser or a Soc. She had friends and acquaintances from both groups. Part of the reason Hinton wrote The Outsiders was because she was bothered by the status wars. Hinton has been quoted as saying, "It was the cold-blooded beating of a friend of mine that made me want to write a book." She wanted to do something to change people's opinions of Greasers. Hinton has also said that the character of Dally was based on a real-life Tulsa boy who was shot and killed by police after he stole a car.

The Outsiders was originally marketed toward adult readers. Instead, it caught the attention of adolescents and teenagers. It became the first realistic problem novel for young adults. The book was taken very seriously by adults, though! Censorship advocates felt that young readers shouldn't be exposed to the violence in The Outsiders. To the media, the book seemed to be not a work of fiction at all, but a report on teenagers. Tulsa newspapers asked Hinton to write columns about juvenile delinquency, suddenly seeing her as an authority on the subject. One Tulsa newspaper brought up the events portrayed in The Outsiders as a reason to call for a curfew law for teenagers in Tulsa.

Despite the realistic theme of the status wars between different groups of teenagers, there are ways in which The Outsiders is more like a fairytale than a documentary. One critic compares the rumbles between the Greasers and the Socs to "jousts in Ivanhoe or pirate wars in Treasure Island." Also, because of the lack of parents or other supportive adults in the lives of the boys, The Outsiders has frequently been compared to Peter Pan. Hinton herself has commented on the lack of parents in most of her novels, explaining, "It's a kid's fantasy not to have adults around!"

A 1970 review predicted that readers would "adopt Ponyboy as a kind of folk hero." In Hinton's second novel, That Was Then, This Is Now, Ponyboy makes a brief entrance into the story. The character of the newest book mentions that Ponyboy once saved a bunch of little kids from a burning church, and adds that Ponyboy has since become a local "kind of folk hero."

One 1967 review mentioned that the setting of The Outsiders is a small Oklahoma city, whereas in reality the media usually depicted gangs and violence in larger cities such as Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. The critic felt that this aspect helped the story, because readers would not have the "subliminal reactions" they might havehad reading about a large city street gang. The critic also pointed out that the boys in the story were not "unassimilated Puerto Ricans or Negroes running berserk," but were instead "pioneer-stock legatees of Huck Finn." (Apparently a discrete way of saying that the Greasers were white.)

The lack of a specific setting in The Outsiders also gives it a sort of mythical feeling, as if the story could have happened anywhere. Most reviewers seem to assume that thestory takes place in or near Tulsa, because that is where SE Hinton lived when she wrote it. But actually, no town is ever named. Ponyboy refers to where he lives as "the neighborhood" or "the city." The abandoned church where he and Johnny hide out is simply in "the country." In later books by Hinton, phony towns are mentioned, but seem to be aliases for existing towns near Tulsa.

No time frame is mentioned, either, adding to the sense of fairytale-ness. The phrase "once upon a time" could easily fit into this story.

Writings about The Outsiders often refer to it as a story about a gang. But is this accurate? In the story, Ponyboy and the others frequently refer to their "gang." Yet at one point, when the Greasers join forces with two ally gangs to fight the Socs, Ponyboy begins to point out the differences between his group of friends and what he considers to be real gangs. "They had a leader and were organized. We were just buddies who stuck together. Each man was his own leader," Ponyboy muses.

Media from between the 1950's and 1980's givees the impression that gangs were rampant in the 1950's, disappeared almost completely in the 1960's, returned in the early 70's, and faded away again in the later 70's. But, according to one website about gangs, a study doen in 1975 and again in 1992 showed that gang violence was actually very prevalent throughout the 60's, when The Outsiders was written. Media and public attention were simply focused on other topics, such as Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and the riots.

In the 1950's and 60's, two theories came about explaining why gangs did the things they did. One theory was that gang members, who came generally from lower-class backgrounds, had a completely different culture and set of values from mainstream America. They were doing only what was expected of them, displaying toughness and street smarts. The other theory, known as the Strain Theory, claimed that juvenile delinquency among boys from lower-class urban backgrounds was actually their reaction to the strains of trying to live up to middle class norms and values, while not having middle class advantages.

The boys from The Outsiders did have different normsl and values than the Socs. On the other hand, they seemed to almost consciously be reacting to the disadvantages and unfairness of their world. Ponyboy made many comments such as "It ain't fair!" and "The rich kids get all the breaks!"

In his book The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence and Control, Michael Klein lists characteristics of the average 1960's gang member. Among them are low IQ, impulsiveness, poor social skills, dependency on peers, difficulty in school, low self-esteem, lack of adult support, tendency towards defiance, aggressiveness and fighting, and an early onset of delinquency. It seems that the boys in The Outsiders share most of these characteristics, with the exception of the low IQ. They all seem to be of average or above-average intelligence. Ponyboy and Johnny read classic literature in their spare time and quote poetry to each other. Darry holds education to be of utmost importance as far as Ponyboy goes, himself having dropped out of school in order to raise his younger brothers. We don't find out much about the educational standings of the other boys, but they don't seem to be at all dimwitted. Dally is the one who probably fits the most of the characteristics listed by Klein. He is the angriest one among them, and craves fights and danger. According to Ponyboy, Dally "drinks, cheats, and jumps small children," and was arrested for the first time when he was only ten years old. Although Dally seems friendly enough in the story, Ponyboy makes it clear early on that he doesn't particularly like Dally, but respects him for his smartness and toughness.

There are a few differences between the boys in The Outsiders and the average street gang in the 1960's. One difference, which was brought up earlier in a reference to a 1967 book review, is the racial issue. In the 30's and 40's, there were many gangs of white youths, separated by ethnic groups. But by the 50's and 60's, although some gangs of white youths existed, most gang members were black or Hispanic.

Gangs were also larger than just a handful of people. There would actually be several branches of each gang, with leaders for each branch. These branches were usually separated by age. The "senior" gang members were in their twenties or older, while "juniors" would be anywhere from sixteen to ninenteen. Thirteen and fourteen-year-olds were considered "babies," while anyone under twelve was an "unborn." There were also female branches of some gangs. But in The Outsiders, the boys, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-two, all stuck together in one tight-knit "gang."

Gang rivalry tended to be over which "territory" belonged to who, and planned "rumbles" seldom got carried out. Gang members seemed to like the idea of fighting, but would usually manage to avoid the actual fight. But in the story, not only does everyone show up for every rumble, even escaping from hospital beds to get there, but the Socs don't even need a reason or an excuse to jump a rival Greaser on the street. Also, when gang members in real life did commit acts of violence, their victims tended to live in the same neighborhood and be of the same social class as the gang members. But in the story, although Greasers do fight with other neighborhood boys from time to time, the Greasers' and Socs' main victims are always from the opposite group.

Still, there are many similarities between gang life in the 1960's, and life in The Outsiders. Gang members in the 1960's ranged in age from eleven to twenty-five, with the average gang member being around seventeen. The boys in the story fit perfectly into this statistic. Gang members often didn't have adult supervision, and lived in unpleasant conditions. They would spend most of their time outside to avoid being at home. This describes most of the boys in the story to a tee. Ponyboy's parents are dead, and the other boys are either abused by their parents or don't get along with them. Darry, the pseudo-father of the group, keeps an open-door policy at his house, so that all of the boy shave somewhere to go at any given time.

On a similar note, for kids who had troubles at home or had no homes to go to, gangs could be like families. Younger kids were disciplined and cared for by older gang members. This holds true for the boys in The Outsiders. The two youngest, Ponyboy and Johnny, seem to be being raised by a group of loving adoptive brothers, and all of the boys consider themselves a family.

Perhaps that is the most important part of The Outsiders, in the end. It has been considered by some to be the epitome of realism in a young adult novel. It has been criticized by some as being not realistic enough. But if it is a fairytale, it is a beautiful one... a story of seven young boys who, with everything stacked against them, manage to form a family. A family that, even in the deaths of two of their own, was strong enough to hold itself together.

The Greasers never exactly get their happy ending. But that's what makes it a "ghetto" fairytale. In the ghetto, and in any poor neighborhood, rarely is there ever a sudden "happily ever after." There is only hope for the future, hope that if one works hard enough at it, one may make it out of the ghetto someday.