Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Notice what Hinton is doing with a single sentence that refuses to end. Ponyboy cries 'It ain't fair!' and then the next sentence opens and never closes — it catalogs the wound of every boy in the gang, strung together with dashes, as if the sentence itself cannot stop hurting. 'I didn't know exactly what I meant' is the narrator admitting his own limit, and then the paragraph proves the limit wrong: Ponyboy does know, deeply and specifically, what he meant. The dashes around 'wild, cunning Dally' and 'Steve---his hatred for his father' are Hinton's grammar of grief. She is teaching the reader that the gang is not a single thing but a pile of private damages that have learned to stand together. Hinton is also making a quiet case for the essay form inside the novel: when feeling outruns plot, the sentence stretches to hold it.
"It ain't fair!" I cried passionately. "It ain't fair that we have all the rough breaks!" I didn't know exactly what I meant, but I was thinking about Johnny's father being a drunk and his mother a se...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, retell Chapter 3. Walk through Two-Bit's drive home offer, Ponyboy's long conversation with Cherry about Soc sophistication and the 'rat race,' the sunset exchange, the blue Mustang's two passes and Bob's three heavy rings, Ponyboy's outburst about Darry and his cruelty to Johnny, Johnny's line about preferring the hitting to the silence, Ponyboy's country daydream under the stars, the slap that sends him running to the lot, and the retrospective narrator's three-word warning that closes the chapter.
Discussion Questions
- Cherry's speech about 'a wall of aloofness' and Socs being 'cool to the point of not feeling anything' is the novel's first serious analysis of the class she belongs to. What does it cost Cherry to say this to Ponyboy, a greaser boy she just met? What does Hinton reveal about Cherry by having her articulate the pathology of her own tribe to someone who cannot use the information against her?
- Ponyboy wounds Johnny on purpose, right after being wounded himself. He says, 'We all know you ain't wanted at home, either. And you can't blame them.' Two-Bit answers with a slap; Johnny answers with 'It's the truth. I don't care.' Analyze the ethics of this triangle. Why does Hinton give Two-Bit the slap and Johnny the shrug? What is each response teaching us about how love survives in a gang?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Clever in a calculating, self-protective, often morally ambiguous way
Item 2
A young person who engages in petty crime and violence, often as a social role rather than an identity
Item 3
With overwhelming emotional force that exceeds the speaker's power to control it
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free