Bullying in Young Adult Literature: S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War

Abstract

This essay aims for a better understanding of bullying by analyzing two Young Adult novels, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974). They are two ground-breaking writers of YA literature for their uncompromising depiction of young people’s vulnerabilities to violence. In particular, bullying in and outside of school is receiving increasing academic attention and media coverage in recent years. The youth began to establish a distinct culture in the mid-twentieth century, and their autonomous attitude and tendency to resist the status quo were perceived as positive influences; however, hyper-competition and intensifying social inequalities aggravated adolescent violence. Nevertheless, traditional understandings of bullying saw it as a few students’ deviations or a harmful yet inevitable phenomenon intrinsic to adolescence. While borrowing theories from historical and sociological studies, this essay explores more nuanced and complex workings of bullying in literary works. This essay shows that bullying is differentiated from impulsive student conflicts as it is a structured and stable process in which adolescents seek a sense of belonging and identity. Bullying allows them to practice the imbalance of power, the implementation of hierarchy and exclusion, and the social acceptability of dangerous behaviors.