Speech On The Outsiders

Good evening members of the Indooroopilly State High School P and C. After completing The Outsiders by S.E Hinton I have come to the conclusion that the book is no longer relevant and should not be included in the year 9 school curriculum. This book lacks social development in the characters and the literary merit that we would expect from a novel. It does not appeal to the average Australian teenager because we are unable to identify with or relate to the remote and irrelevant situations and encounters the characters face, it lacks the broad vocabulary of an experienced writer and it promotes violence through Ponyboy’s glorification of gang behaviour and violence to solve problems.
To begin with, Ponyboy glorifies violence and believes that solving problems with violence is acceptable. Ponyboy’s journey throughout the book is one of violence, fights and death that not many year 9 students can identify with. Ponyboy is lead on a path of seemingly negative and remote situations that he attempts to navigate and employs strategies that promote the

Even from the beginning Ponyboy recognised the different social classes and the struggles that the Greasers face. ‘I'm not sure how you spell it, but Socs is the abbreviation for Socials, the West-side rich kids. It's like the term greaser that's used to class all us boys on the East Side’ (chapter 1 p.3). ‘And you can't win against them no matter how hard you try, because they've got all the breaks and even whipping them isn't going to change that fact.’ Despite the death of his friends and a Soc as a result of the warfare between the gangs Ponyboy never truly acknowledges that something should be done, nor does he try to resolve this. Ponyboys character as well as many other characters do not progress or mature through the book and never try to positively solve their problems