The Outsiders The Outsiders question


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Today's Relevance - Bored Teens Getting in Trouble
Monty J Heying Monty J (last edited Aug 20, 2013 04:56PM ) Aug 20, 2013 11:19AM
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/...

Per the above article, "A college baseball player jogging on the streets of Oklahoma was shot to death by three teenagers, one of whom told police they were 'bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody,' authorities said."

The heartless insensibility of this act of murder by teenage boys reminds me of the way the Soches stalked and beat the Greasers in Hinton's The Outsiders.

Like Hamlet and The Odyssey and all the others, Outsiders has the legs of classic literature because it accurately and poignantly portrays important details of a life and time with rare authenticity.

We can criticize the crudeness of the young writer's style, but don't we do the same with Jack Kerouac's On the Road? The talent and social impact is in the composition; wordsmithing is secondary.

Incidentally, today's crime was committed in the same general Oklahoma City area portrayed in The Outsiders.

It seems that the more accessible we make guns, the more idiots get their hands on them.



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