The Outsiders — Chapter 5

About This Passage

This is a small scene with a large heart. On the surface, two boys in a hideout cut and bleach their hair so the police won't recognize them. Underneath, Hinton is writing about something much larger — what it means when an outside force takes away a piece of who you are. Pony has already told us, just before this passage, that the hair is 'my pride,' that it makes him look like Sodapop, that it is the trademark of a greaser. Notice how Hinton slows the moment down: she gives us the razor's edge, the act of sawing, the shudder, the begging. She doesn't let us hurry past. Then she gives us the cracked mirror and the 'double take' — the strange split second when you do not recognize your own face. Notice the precise emotional words: not just 'sad' but 'miserable.' Not just 'different' but 'a Halloween costume we can't get out of.' This is what skilled writing looks like — the small physical action carries the big emotional truth. Pony's outside has been edited; his inside has been hurt. The chapter is asking the reader to see that things on the outside of a person can be tied to important things on the inside.

Narration Prompt

Tell Chapter 5 in your own words. Begin with Ponyboy waking alone in the cold church and finding Johnny's note in the dust ('Went to get supplies. Be back soon. J.C.'). Walk through what Johnny brought back, the haircut and bleaching scene, the hard cry the boys had together when Johnny said 'There sure is a lot of blood in people,' and the way Pony comforted Johnny 'like Soda had held him.' Then move to the long quiet days reading Gone with the Wind out loud and playing poker, Johnny's surprising ability to find meaning in the book, and his hero-worship of Dally as 'gallant.' Tell about the morning Pony said the Robert Frost poem to Johnny while the sun came up — gray to pink to gold. End with Dally arriving in Buck's T-bird, the letter from Sodapop, the meal at Dairy Queen, and the news that all of Tulsa is now at war and that Cherry Valance is spying for the greasers.

Discussion Questions

1. When Pony looks in the cracked mirror after his hair is cut and bleached, he says, 'It just didn't look like me. It made me look younger, and scareder, too.' What does Hinton want us to see by giving Pony a mirror moment in this chapter, when so much else is happening? How can you tell from Pony's reaction that the haircut has shaken something deeper than vanity?
2. Just before the haircut, Pony tells us that hair was 'the one thing we were proud of. Maybe we couldn't have Corvairs or madras shirts, but we could have hair.' What does this tell you about what it means to be a greaser in Tulsa, and why a haircut might feel like the law trying to take something from a boy who already does not have very much? What in the chapter makes you think Hinton is writing about more than just hair?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide