Outsiders

Background Information

Writers often use outsiders to comment on the mainstream of everyday life. Looking at people on the edge, or on the outside, is a way of examining the society that has put them there. Very often the writer wishes to expose a particular intolerance, or narrow-mindedness, in society. The moral seems to be that a society that included these people would be a better, more tolerant society. Writers use different kinds of outsiders to make and explore their point:

• The marginalised
• The misunderstood
• The rebel

These categories often overlap.

The marginalised

Several of the writers mentioned in the programme have such an agenda. Harper Lee uses Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, to expose the racism of the American south. Finch is also a reminder that not all outsiders are such because they have no choice. Not all outsiders are victims. Sometimes their stand against the majority can make them heroic. Hollywood films are often about the little guy who takes on the big guys – and in Hollywood, the little guy usually wins.

Atticus Finch decides to put himself on the outside when he agrees to defend Tom Robinson and fight the prejudice of the town. Tom Robinson is condemned to death for allegedly raping a white girl. But as Atticus points out, his real 'crime' is being black in a racist community. Atticus loses his fight for Tom Robinson; but he begins, slowly, to make some people in the town confront their hypocrisy. Although an outsider, Atticus ultimately becomes a leader, someone who effects social change.

Harper Lee uses both these men to challenge the racist attitudes of the society in which she grew up. For S E Hinton, the problem was to do with class. The fight between the Socies and the Greasers is about class. Both sides eventually come to understand – too late for Pony Boy, who dies as a result of the gang rivalry – that it is who you are, not where you were born, that is important. Hinton also wanted to convey the idea that you can be an outsider and a good person, the terms should not be mutually exclusive. Both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Outsiders illustrate a shift in post-war literature; those who didn’t conform were being treated in a new, more positive light. Perhaps a reflection of a more enlightened, tolerant society.

These texts contrast to earlier texts explored in the programme. The isolation of the main protagonists in Of Mice and Men, The Withered Arm and Frankenstein has much more tragic consequences.

In The Withered Arm, Hardy looks at how women can be outsiders. In a sense, both the main female characters are victims of Farmer Lodge. Rhoda Brook has an illegitimate child by him, and Gerta, whom he marries, is rejected by him when she becomes disabled. Although at first the women become friends, their friendship is destroyed when Gerta learns that it is Rhoda's dream that has caused her arm to wither. By the end of the story Gerta is dead. Rhoda is alone, rejected by a society that sees her as a witch with supernatural powers.

Some critics have seen this not as a story championing the cause of women but as one which still presents them as victims, who are either weak or malign. Charlotte Perkin Gilman's Turned, however, has far more assertive heroines who stand up to the man in the tale and leave him.

Steinbeck uses his outsiders in Of Mice and Men to remind readers of the suffering of people in the Depression. His characters, George and Lennie, represent an underclass – drifters who have been almost forgotten by society. Many of the characters in the novel are outsiders in one way or another. Lennie is simple. Crooks is black and disabled. Curley's wife doesn't even have a name; and Candy is old. But they all have dreams.

The misunderstood

In a sense, Steinbeck is not only condemning society but asking that these outsiders be understood. Again this is a common cry of writers. Hinton also takes her lesson one stage further. She suggests that people should be allowed to be different, that people do not have to all be the same. Harper Lee uses the character of Boo Radley to make a similar point. Boo is forced by his father to become a recluse after he gets into some trouble as a teenager. Locked away from sight, the town turns him into a monster. It is only when Scout learns to 'walk around in his shoes' that she begins to see him properly.

Frankenstein creates a real 'monster'. But Mary Shelley's novel asks who the real monster is – Frankenstein or the creature? Although films often portray the monster as a kind of zombie, Shelley's Frankenstein makes a creature who can talk, who is sensitive and loves beauty. His terrifying appearance condemns him to a life of rejection from society; and this in turn causes his monstrous behaviour.

The theme of 'Frankenstein's monster' has continued to be explored by writers ever since. Philip K Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? echoes Shelley's novel. Dick describes a world in which the police have to track down and kill androids, or 'replicants', who have broken free of the role for which they were originally designed. They are not seen as human. Yet when a group of replicants actually confront the man who made them, they sound like Frankenstein's creature. They ask why he has created them to appreciate the beauties of the universe when he also designed them to live for only four short years.

The rebel

Philip K Dick's 'replicants' are also rebels. Novels and films for teenagers often look at the way young people rebel against the constraints that society imposes on them. Even Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is about teenage rebellion. Romeo and Juliet refuse to accept the path that their parents have mapped out for them; but their rebellion – as in films like Rebel Without a Cause – ends tragically. Aside from rebellion, the teenage sense of isolation has also been widely explored in literature, perhaps most memorably in Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

In a sense writers themselves have often been seen as outsiders, misunderstood by the society in which they lived. In the case of a poet like Keats, this is part of their 'romance'. Keats died young and impoverished, his genius unrecognised. Emily Dickinson, an American poet, would not emerge from her room. Many writers have spoken out against the evils that they see, often risking their lives in doing so. The Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam was killed by Stalin for speaking out against his tyranny. The Spanish playwright Lorca was killed by Fascists.