Connections to The Outsiders

    The book, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, has many strong points that are also used in other pieces of writing. An example is the poem, We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks. They both connect a lot with social titles and social activity. That could mean their group  or gang, or just their friends and who they hang out with. For The Outsiders it’s the Greasers, also known as hoods, and in the poem just hoods.

    In We Real Cool the author writes “we sing sin”. The people they are describing make a lot of bad decisions, as in they most likely are aware their decisions are bad but they do it anyway. It connects to The Outsiders because Greasers make those bad decisions too, they get into fights and steal. Especially Dally, who is known for stealing at gas stations and Two-Bit who always carries a switchblade. Greasers are seen as being mean and ‘singing sin’.

    The author also writes, in We Real Cool,”we die soon”. That ties back to making the bad decisions, whith bad decisions there come bad consequences. The author wrote that in because they know that what they did can lead to police or getting injured very badly. The people they are describing can also be using drugs or are wanted by someone horrible on the streets, those things can lead to death. Most, if not all, greasers understand that very well. Even though not all the deaths are caused by bad decisions, most of them are. I think that’s because the Greasers and the people that are being described in th poem have life a lot more straightforward than Socs, whatever the Socs may be for the people in the poem, me, or people I know. When things are more straightforward they experience harder things, like death.

    We Real Cool and The Outsiders are similar, mostly because of the Greasers. The people in the poem and the Greasers share a lot of qualities which is why I connected the two pieces of writing. The people in We Real Cool and the Greasers have a connection through social titles/activity, that means they are apart of a certain social group. Maybe Gwendolyn Brooks was inspired by S.E. Hinton.