The Outsiders — Chapter 12

About This Passage

Chapter 12 closes the novel by converting private grief into public address. After the hearing in which Pony is acquitted, the deteriorations that follow (lost shoes, failed compositions, the bottle-end raised at three Socs in a parking lot), the family fight, Soda's tearful plea about being the middleman, and the three brothers' tied race home, Pony returns to his bedroom and opens Gone with the Wind. A note falls out — Johnny's last letter, written from the hospital, asking Pony to 'stay gold' and to 'tell Dally' that there's still lots of good in the world. The passage above is the chapter's pivotal cognitive movement: Pony's grief generalizes outward from Johnny and Dally to 'hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities,' and the small phone call to Mr. Syme — 'how long can it be?' — is the moment Pony chooses to become the writer of the book we have just finished reading. Hinton frames vocation here as a response to a request from the dead.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 12 in detail. Cover the hearing (Pony acquitted, the doctor's prior conversation with the judge, Cherry's testimony, the Socs' false attribution of the killing to Johnny, the judge's surprisingly mild questions to Pony); the post-hearing deterioration (lost shoes, the stocking-feet walk home, schoolwork collapse, Mr. Syme's offer of a passing C in exchange for a strong theme); the parking-lot encounter with three Socs (the broken Pepsi bottle, Pony's emotional 'zero,' Two-Bit's warning, Pony picking up the glass); the home fight (Darry's 'living in a vacuum,' Soda bolting); the chase to the park, Soda's plea about being the middleman, the line about Dally as 'worse than dead'; the three brothers' tied race home; the discovery of Johnny's letter inside Gone with the Wind; the universalizing turn ('hundreds and hundreds of boys'); the phone call to Mr. Syme; and the metafictional close in which Pony begins his theme with the novel's own opening sentence.

Discussion Questions

1. Hinton ends the novel with the same sentence it began: 'When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house...' What does this circular structure reveal about who has been telling the story all along, and how does the discovery change what the reader has just finished reading?
2. When the three Socs approach Pony in the parking lot, the text says he 'didn't feel anything — scared, mad, or anything. Just zero,' and he breaks the bottle and threatens them — but then bends down to pick up the glass so no one will get a flat tire. How does Hinton use the small second action (picking up the glass) to argue that character is shown in the movement after the dramatic act, not in the dramatic act itself?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide