Hi! We just completed our second project in humanities. We read a book called The Outsiders by S.E Hinton and did an exhibition on it about the novel. We presented a tableau of one of the important scenes in the book to our parents, siblings and friends. A tableau is a still image of a scene, it’s as if we were acting out the scene and then we just froze. 

The Outsiders 

Characters 

This book is set in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It’s based on a group of “Greasers” (this is equivalent to people in poverty) who are getting bullied by “Soc’s” ( This is equivalent to rich people who live a easy life). The main character is a 14 year old boy called Ponyboy. He has 2 brothers :Sodapop, who’s 16 and Darry, who’s 21. Darry has to take care of Ponyboy and Soda after their parents were killed in a car crash.  The rest of the gang of greasers are Jonnhy, Two-Bit and Dally. Johnny plays a key character in the novel. He is a young boy about the same age as Ponyboy who has alcoholic and abusive parents. In the book they describe him as a puppy that’s been kicked too many times. In the second chapter of the book we learn that Johnny was almost killed by the Soc’s when they jumped him, this affected Johnny a lot and as a consequence he always carries a switchblade on him. The next greaser is Two-Bit. Two-bit is described as a funny, annoying person who always smarts off the cops. He doesn’t play a big role in the book. The last greaser in the gang is Dally. Dally is a beat up guy who appears  to have no emotion. He was arrested when he was only 10 years old and he lived alone on the streets of New York. In this book Dally also plays a big role. Everyone looks up to Dally for help, but having no faith in humanity can make life pretty difficult.  There are some others charters in this book who come from the Soc’s. The main Soc’s are Sherry, Bob and Randy. Sherry also called cherry because of her red hair is one of the socs who actually gets to know the greasers before judging them. Cherry like Ponyboy likes to watch sunsets and read books. The other two greasers Bob and Randy are really good friends Bob dies early on in the book and Randy isn’t really mentioned much so there’s not much written about them except that he believes that socs live terrible lives too, he shows Ponyboy a different perspective on life. 

Plot

The plot of this book is fairly basic but it has a lot of meaning behind it. The first big event that happens is when Poynboy and Johnny run away. The reason they ran away was because Poynboy and Darry have a really bad relationship and Ponyboy gets tired of Darry telling him what to do. Him and Johnny run away to this park were there going to stay for the night but the Soc’s find them. There’s a fountain in the park and the Soc’s try to drown Ponyboy, but Johnny (who as said in the first paragraph had a switchblade on him at all times) saved Ponyboy by stabbing Bob which sadly killed him. Johnny and Ponyboy then have to flee from the police because by morning the police will be out searching for them, so they  flee to an old abandon church in Windrixville. After a couple days of surviving in the church Dally comes to take them for a lunch so they can re-energize before going back to the church. When they arrive back at the church they see that it has lit on fire and because it was a old building it went up in flames quickly. The worst part is that some kids had decided to explore inside the church and now were stuck inside. Heroically Johnny and Ponyboy run into the church to save the kids. They mange to save all the kids but Johnny is put in the hospital with 3 degree burns and a broken back. Later in the book Jonnhy dies which causes Darry to rob a store and get the police to shoot him on a suicidal mission.

Worldview

The main point of this project was to learn about how your beliefs, values, economy, geography, time, society and knowledge effect your worldview. Worldview is basically how you see the world. 

Geography: The outsiders are hugely affected by geography they live in Oklahoma, USA. In the book Johnny and Dally carry weapons around. In America this is more socially acceptable than it would be in other places in the world. 

Beliefs: Ponyboy believes in the better of people and the world. This affects him a lot in the book, for example he believes in cherry who is a Soc and other people who didn’t believe in the goodness of the world might not, like Dally.

Vaules: Ponyboy, Sodapop and the rest of the gang value each others company and help. This means that in the book they are really close as if they were brothers. 

Economy: In the book the greasers are poor and the soc’s are rich. This is the main reason why the 2 groups are separated.

Time: The book is set in in the 1960’s. If the book was set now it would be very different. For example Dally probably wouldn’t have been shot by the police. Nowadays they would probably tase him and arrest him instead of just shooting him on site.

Tableau+ Winter Exhibition 

We were assigned a scene in the outsiders with the assignment to make a tableau about it. The scene our group was assigned was the judge scene. This was the very last important scene in the book. It was when Ponyboy was acquitted by the judge and allowed to stay with Dally/not go to a kids care home. For the tableau we froze the moment when Ponyboy was let free and everyone was celebrating. In total we had to do 2 tableau’s the second one was the same scene but changed as if it was in modern  times. For this we kept most of the things the same except that we made it on a zoom call, we also made the judge a social worker. To present our tableau’s we had a winter exhibition where we made a set and acted out our tableau’s in front of all our parents. This project taught me all about worldview and how it affects our everyday lives, I also learned about acting and how to show emotion through your actions. Hope you enjoyed reading!