The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton is a timeless coming-of-age story that follows the conflict between two rival groups — the greasers and the socs — in the fictional city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the 1960s.
The narrator of the novel is Ponyboy Curtis, a 14-year-old Greaser who lives with his two older brothers, Darry and Sodapop. Greasers are a group of poor, lower-class kids mostly from broken homes with absent or alcoholic parents. They live on the West Side of town and get their name from their greasy hairstyles. In contrast, the socs, or socials, are a group of rich kids mostly from stable, two-parent families. They live on the East Side of town and view themselves as superior to the
