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The outsiders Main characters

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A'la Shmoop So to start us off can you tell

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us a little bit about the characters and how we

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learn about them So the outsiders is more or less [Woman discussing The Outsiders book]

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about a group of teenage boys The protagonist's name is

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pony boy he's a teenager in tulsa oklahoma in the

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nineteen sixties and his friends are members of his gang [Gang members appear]

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the greasers So in this novel we learn about characters

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in two different ways One is direct characterization and one

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is indirect characterization and that's a principle that applies to

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Any novel or story Indirect characterization is when you find

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out about a character by observing what they do and [Man holding a knife]

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what they say They're not being described to you Ah

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direct characterization as you might guess is when the narrator

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or the character directly tells you something about himself or

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another character So in this instance we have scenes where

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ponyboy describes his hair which is longer than most boys

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in this town But we also have scenes where ponyboy [Ponyboy stroking his hair]

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is just observing other people or thinking about what he's

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doing And we get a sense of his personality that

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way So pony boy's friends We also learn about their

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personalities through direct and indirect characterization on dh One of

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the direct pieces of characterization we get is their name

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So his friend keith is known as a two bit [Keith appears]

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because he talks a lot So that's like If i

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said to you what are your two cents Can i

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have your two cents Keith has two cents and then [Keith on a pile of 2 cents]

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some so they call him to bits Um and likewise

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their friends Soda pop It is as you might expect

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very sweet and bubbly And it's interesting that these characters [Boy holding soda can]

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are all named in these nontraditional ways Do you think

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that the fact that they go by these nicknames is

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important It is in a lot of different ways It's

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true to the setting it's very realistic They're in a

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gang and they all have nicknames for each other and

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it's also a way of capturing teenage identity Ah your

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identity as a teenager comes from what your friends think [Ponyboy's facebook page appears]

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of you and how you act in the world Yeah

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who are the characters And how do we learn more

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about them Our nicknames important to the characters and the

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