In the 1960s, the Young Adult Library Services Association coined the genre “young adult fiction,” defining it as an exploration of the adolescent experience—the journey of self-discovery, identity formation, and addressing complex issues from a teenage perspective. In 1967, a gritty, coming-of-age tale about two rival gangs entered the mix—S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. Hinton was only 18 when the book was published, an appropriate age for the author of what would become one of the most popular young adult novels of all time. To date, The Outsiders has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, been translated into nine languages, and is an essential text taught in the American public school system. Hinton has said that she was motivated to write the novel because she was “surrounded by teens and I couldn’t see anything going on in those books that had anything to do with real life.” The novel received praise for exploring the marginalization experienced by young boys and their vulnerability, despite societal norms that encourage young men to be tough and unfeeling.
Hinton intended for The Outsiders to paint a sympathetic portrait of the novel’s main gang, the Greasers—a youth subculture in the 1950s and 1960s whose style was inspired by Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) and typically branded as juvenile delinquents. Basing the book’s characters on the boys she grew up around, Hinton strove to convey a more nuanced exploration of these young men while critiquing the inequalities and classism that factored into their struggles for personal identity.
One notion Hinton subverts throughout The Outsiders is phrenology, an early 19th-century pseudoscience that argued a person’s physical aspects, particularly bumps on the skull, could indicate moral character and intellectual capabilities. Phrenology’s origins can be traced back to another pseudoscience called physiognomy, which posits that a person's facial features or expressions are indicative of character or ethnicity, a belief system that made way for a long history of appearance-based prejudices. In The Outsiders, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Ponyboy, defines other characters according to their eye color. As Ponyboy's preconceived notions about others prove false throughout the novel, Hinton illustrates that despite fixations on outward appearances, a person’s true value is found in their behaviour and personality.
In the novel, characters with brown, warm-toned eyes have charismatic, compelling exteriors, charming those around them. Ponyboy’s second-oldest brother, Sodapop Curtis, is described as “movie-star handsome,” instantly endearing him to the reader. His dark brown eyes are “gentle and sympathetic one moment and blazing with anger the next.” He has their Dad's eyes, but he is “one of a kind” with an inherent capability of being able to understand everybody.
Ponyboy’s best friend, Johnny Cade, with his big black eyes and a “nervous, suspicious look,” is like a small, dark puppy lost in a crowd. From being abused at home, to being jumped by the Socs, Ponyboy asserts that if it was not for the gang treating him like a younger brother, Johnny “would never have known what love and affection are.” With this description, Hinton creates an innocent appearance for Johnny while still layering a dark shroud around him. For a 16-year-old, Johnny has seen and experienced all the wrong things. Ponyboy connects the most with characters who have dark eyes, possibly because they remind him of his deceased father. These connections are Ponyboy’s way of keeping his Dad’s memory alive and are essential to the plot’s progression.
Ponyboy describes Dallas “Dally” Winston as being “so real he scared me” with eyes of “blue, blazing ice, cold with a hatred of the whole world.” With this language, Hinton constructs a heartless, invulnerable exterior and emotional distance between Dally and the gang— it would “be a miracle if Dally loved anything.” While Ponyboy does not like Dally, he respects him. Despite his harsh exterior, Dallas softens via his fondness for Johnny. When Johnny dies of his injuries from the church fire, and Dally commits suicide-by-cop, we realise he was not as heartless and hateful as he presented. He was just a desperate kid consumed with grief, making the situation all the more tragic.
When Ponyboy introduces himself, we learn that he has greenish-grey eyes, but wishes they were more grey. Keith “Two-Bit” Matthews, the group's wisecracker, is the only character with grey eyes. Both Ponyboy and Two-Bit are latchkey kids, but Two-Bit has significantly more freedom. Perhaps in wishing for eyes more like Two-Bit, Ponyboy is actually wishing for the freedom that he is so often denied. It could also be Two-Bit’s wise-cracking, easy-going demeanor that Ponyboy wishes he had, too.
Ponyboy goes on to say, “I hate most guys that have green eyes.” While he doesn’t elaborate, only two other characters have green eyes: his eldest brother, Darrel “Darry” Curtis, and one of the Soc girls from the drive-in, Sherri “Cherry” Valance. Both have strained relationships with Ponyboy, which could be indicative of his self-hatred, not wanting to be like Darry, and the jealousy he harbors towards Cherry.
Darry’s eyes are “pale blue-green ice,” and he is described as being handsome if his eyes were not so cold. That piercing shade of blue, similar to Dally’s eyes, reflects a coldness to Ponyboy. The green connecting them as brothers could remind Ponyboy of the fact that they were close before their parents died—a relationship that has changed since Darry took over as the acting parent. Darry’s parenting of Ponyboy and Sodapop creates an emotional gulf, making it difficult for them to relate to one another. When they reunite in the hospital after Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dally have rescued the children from the church fire, Ponyboy describes Darry’s eyes as pleading—pleading for forgiveness, reconciliation, and an understanding like they used to have. Ponyboy realises Darry truly cares for him. The distance was caused by Darry’s unspoken fear of losing another person he loves. Ponyboy “wondered how I could ever have thought him hard and unfeeling,” just as he once believed Dally was. In reality, they are all just boys forced to grow up too soon, who don’t know how to navigate an adult world.
When introduced, Cherry is the first character to challenge Ponyboy’s prejudices against the Socs, declaring that the groups are alike. Attempting to convince him, she says, “things are rough all over”— one town, two very different ways. Ponyboy realises that the Greasers and Socs see the same sunset on either side of town, illustrating that despite their separate lives, they often have similar experiences.
Later on, Cherry reassures Ponyboy and Two-Bit that the Socs will fight fair. Refusing to see Johnny at Ponyboy’s request because he killed her boyfriend Bob, albeit in self-defence, we learn “she has green eyes.” Only when Cherry does something Ponyboy disagrees with does he bring up her green eyes, and his dislike for Cherry begins.
Ponyboy, Darry, and Cherry are determined individuals who feel both hatred and deep empathy for one another. While the hatred stems from a misunderstanding of how the other lives, they are ultimately able to reconcile through acknowledging their similarities. Ponyboy and Darry have reconciled by the end, emphasizing that despite the adversity they face, they are ultimately just kids in a difficult situation. Conversely, Cherry represents that although the Greasers and the Socs experience societal differences, they share similar personalities and “saw the same sunset.” Ponyboy eventually realizes he never hated either of them; he hated the rifts that existed between them.
Phrenology would have us believe that the emphasis on eye color in The Outsiders might determine which characters would suffer due to their poverty, lack of education, or other societal factors. Excluding Ponyboy, multiple Greasers have dropped out or been held back in school. In contrast, those born with desirable physical attributes would be born into “promising” families with above-average moral character and intellectual qualities. By this theory, the events in the novel are the Greasers’ fault. They would deserve the worst life has to offer based on something as arbitrary as how they look. Hinton’s characterizations challenge this once-popular belief by exploring how these tough-seeming boys actually possess profound emotional complexity.
By allowing the Greasers to eventually sympathize with the Socs, Hinton’s novel has encouraged generations of young readers to see how they are not unlike those they perceive as different. Hinton uses Ponyboy to humanise the Greasers, parallels Greaser and Soc, and uses Cherry as Ponyboy’s foil. In doing so, she subverts the harmful ideals that Phrenology perpetuates. Ponyboy judges his peers based on what their eyes represent, yet readers ultimately understand that Ponyboy’s presumptions are often false. Ponyboy himself realizes that despite their different appearances, the novel’s characters are all shaped by their environment, allowing him to sympathize with those he previously believed to be his enemy.
