Eye to Eye

Authors Note- The reason I wrote this was because I wanted to show people that there is another point of view that people aren't seeing. I also wanted to show the reader that it may not always look the same because it is told from one persons perspective.  

           

In  The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton , the Greasers try to survive without getting killed or beaten by the dreadful Socs; the Socs are a gang from the west side who are very wealthy and like to start fights and beat up Greasers for fun. The story is written in the Greasers point of view. From this perspective, a lot of events and characters are described in a way that creates pain or hurt in the reader about the Greasers who are abused by the Socs.

One way that the Greasers point of view influences the reader's interpretation is how their perspective shows that the Greasers just mind their own business all the time and how the awful Socs come and try to kill them for no reason. When a reader reads this story they feel bad for the Greasers getting beat up, but what the reader may not know is the Socs background story. As the reader I feel like if I knew the Socs story I would understand way they do the things that they do, but as a reader I don’t know that so I just have to go from what the book says.

However, the reader would feel a lot differently about the Greasers if the novel was written in the point of view of the Socs. For instance, the reader wouldn't think the Socs were so bad if they knew the Socs have had a rough time going through life, or if you knew that the Socs would get beat all of the time by their parents.

As you can see, the point of view of a story forces the reader to see just one side of the story. In The Outsiders, the narrator’s perspective makes the reader think differently about the Socs and makes the reader feel like the Socs are bad people and the Greasers are helpless and innocent. Understanding the narrator’s point of view is so important because if you don’t go by where the view of the writer is coming from, then the ending of the book will not make any sense because you think differently about the characters in the book; even if you don’t know the point of view of the other people you’re just going to have to trust the reader and believe what they say.