For as long as people have had disagreements, there have been social classes divided by both ethnicity and wealth. The rigid social structure formed by these disparate groups often harms the lower echelons of society, who many times end up vilified by the rest of society. In SE Hinton's book, The Outsiders, the main character, Ponyboy Curtis, tries to combat the social separation between the Greasers, presented as poor gang members, and the Socs, depicted as rich and out of trouble. In the book Ponyboy, a Greaser, tries to escape by killing a Soc in self-defense. In Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini illustrates the effect of social and political conflict on the country and its people through Amir, a wealthy Sunni Pashtun boy, and Hassan, a poor Shia Hazara. Hassan is sexually assaulted because he belongs to a religious minority and because he is a servant. Amir abandons him and tries to forget until he chooses to save Hassan's son from the Taliban. Both Hinton and Hosseini explore the theme of class separations harming people, which extends across the radically different settings and characters of the two novels. The settings of the two novels differ drastically in both time and place. Hinton's story is set in Oklahoma. “He was staring at my head as he circled me. «I wouldn't have believed it. I thought all the wild Indians of Oklahoma had been tamed (Hinton 106).” Hosseini, however, places his book primarily in Afghanistan. Hinton portrayed his novel in the 1960s while Hosseini uses a broad spectrum from 1975 to the 21st century. “I thought about the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came and changed everything (Hosseini 2).” While different settings change what is happening at the time you read the book, that doesn't change... the center of the card... him; another part of it is because he believes Hassan is just a dirty Hazara boy. “I was chasing the car, screaming for it to stop. I pulled Hassan out of the back seat and told him I was sorry, so sorry, as my tears mixed with the rainwater. We hugged each other in the downpour (Hosseini 109).” After Amir forces Hassan to leave, he laments that he left, more like he was forced, his best friend to leave him. At that moment he sees the dirty Hazara boy as his best friend. In both of these stories, the main character realizes how similar they are to the other social or religious group. Both Hosseini and Hinton, while writing about very different scenarios, feature the same theme in each of their novels: class separations harm all people. By learning from their work, we can aim to break down these barriers between social classes and bridge the gap between our separate societies.