At a time when the average young-adult novel was, in Hinton’s characterization, “Mary Jane went to the prom,” “The Outsiders” shocked readers with its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and “rumbling.”

The article profiles novelist Susan Eloise Hinton, author of the book "The Outsiders." It mentions that Hinton would describe herself as a loner but clearly enjoys herself of connecting with other people. It states that she is motivated in providing ideas for her stories through watching people, listening to their conversations, and interpreting their motives.

Although The Outsiders has been a favorite with teens ever since its publication in 1967, adult critics have been more cautious in their assessments. Initial reviews debated the supposed "realism" of this startling new work, as well as the skill of its young author. Thomas Fleming, for instance, questioned Hinton's portrayal of the Soc-Greaser conflict. He noted that in his hometown it was the poor kids who beat up the rich ones, not the other way around.

The debate over whether anyone can achieve his or her American dream has raged since long before the term was coined in 1913, and continues in full force today. Hinton's The Outsiders shows how a group of people whose birth was not fortuitous, who had to fight for every scrap that they had. Their biggest fight comes when they have to face people who can not believe that these greasers have the ability to achieve anything worthwhile, much less the respect to appreciate it if they did.

When S. E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders opens, Ponyboy Curtis, narrator and protagonist, is walking home from the movies, thinking about "Paul Newman and a ride home." His thoughts quickly sketch his identity: he is fourteen, with long, greased-back hair—a mark of his class as a "greaser," one of the boys from the poor east side of his city. But unlike most greasers, he values books and movies.

It was not until 1964, after Kennedy was shot, that President Lyndon B. Johnson could muster the political capital to enact his own expansive program of reforms. That year, Johnson declared that he would make the United States into a “Great Society” in which poverty and racial injustice had no place. He developed a set of programs that would give poor people “a hand up, not a handout.”