Community In The Outsiders

Words: 958
Pages: 4

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton shows the importance of quality communities. A community is a group of people who live near each other or have something in common and support one another. Communities provide a sense of belonging and support for their members in times of need. However, communities can also hurt individuals by excluding people. Also, other people sometimes form stereotypes or prejudices about certain communities. Larger communities such as towns or cities can sometimes be divided, thus hurting many of the people who live there. Good communities are communities in which people look out for each other, there are low levels of crime and unemployment, the people do not exclude or think themselves superior to other people, and …show more content…
Some of the Socs beat up the Greasers and commit other crimes as was demonstrated when S.E. Hinton wrote: “Not like the Socs, who jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper for being a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next” (4). This makes the Soc community bad in its treatment of other communities. The Socs look out for particular individuals in their community but not usually all of them, like the Greasers do. For example, Randy and Cherry both cared about Bob, but they did not necessarily feel the same concern for all the other Socs. This opinion is supported when Randy says: “Bob was a good guy. He was the best buddy a guy ever had” (Hinton 98) and when Cherry says (referring to Bob): “He wasn’t just any boy. He had something that made people follow him, something that marked him different, maybe a little better, than the crowd” (Hinton 110). The quality of the Soc community varies from member to member. The third community in The Outsiders is the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma as a whole. The town is divided by social prejudices. Citizens often hurt other citizens by believing stereotypes about different groups of people in the community, such all the Greasers being considered criminals or juvenile delinquents just because some Greasers are. The author painted a picture of this stereotype when she