It all started on the top of a country hill, in the middle of nowhere, in an old, rundown church. Two young teens sitting on the back steps staring out into a plain of vibrant colors on the horizon and the mist on the ground at sunrise. In the novel, The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton uses the concept of sunsets/sunrises to first show what an outsider really is: one who doesn't feel too much or too little, one who steps beyond the boundary of one's socioeconomic class.. one who can drop the facade that they've been living with their whole lives. As pony left Johnny asleep in the church, he went outside to watch the sunrise: "... I went to sit on the steps and smoke a cigarette. The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, and sometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. The clouds change from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. there was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It was beautiful," (Hinton 77) This shows that only those who watch sunsets/sunrises with intent and interest are outsiders. The ones who aren't hardened to their core to think they're a waste of time, or the ones who are too "cool" to not care about them. Only those who are willing to sit and think, and just let everything fall away as they are truly themselves. Another example of sunsets/sunrises being connected to those who are outsiders is when Pony is thinking to himself about how Cherry, a Soc, and himself, a Greaser, might not be so different: "Maybe Cherry stood still and watched the sunset while she was supposed to be taking the garbage out. Stood there and watched and forgot everything else until her brother screamed at her to hurry up. I shook my head. It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio was the same one I saw from the back steps. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset." (Hinton 40-41) In this scene, Pony is thinking about how the Socs and Greasers aren't that different. All of their lives were the same until the socioeconomic classes came and put all these stereotypes on the other classes, which enforced ideas of hatred and prejudice and this feeling to be something you were meant to be but what really none of us were all along. There are no two people in this world who are the same, but when we drop facades and boundaries between one another, we can be the same in mind and in friendships. We don't have to be prejudiced against other people, we don't have to hate. We can be the same... together. We... can be Outsiders.