The Outsiders — Chapter 6

About This Passage

This is one of the most surprising moments in the entire book. Dallas Winston — the hard-eyed, mean, jail-record-a-mile-long greaser who has spent the whole novel sneering and cussing and refusing to feel anything — suddenly speaks in 'a pleading, high voice, using a tone I had never heard from him before.' Pony is so startled that he writes, 'Dally never talked like that. Never.' Notice what the soft voice is for: it is for Johnny. Dally has not begged for himself in the entire book — but he is begging Johnny not to turn himself in to the police, because Dally knows what jail does to a kid. The quietest sentence in the passage is the most painful: 'Like it happened to me.' That tiny three-word phrase is Dally telling Johnny — and the reader — that he was once a softer boy too, before he got locked up at ten years old, and that the hardness we have seen in him for the whole book is not who he was born; it is what jail made him. Hinton is teaching a hard truth: that the meanest, scariest people we meet are sometimes people who used to be tender, and got hurt into being tough. Notice also Hinton's writing craft. She slows the sentence down with a dash and a small physical detail — 'he pushed his white-blond hair back out of his eyes.' That tiny gesture is Dally trying to compose himself, like somebody wiping his eyes before saying something hard. The passage is asking the reader to understand Dally with more compassion than they have understood him with up until now.

Narration Prompt

Tell Chapter 6 in your own words. Begin with Dally driving Pony and Johnny back from the church, and Dally explaining that Cherry Valance is now a spy for the greasers and that Tulsa has gone to all-out warfare between greasers and Socs. Tell about the meal at the Dairy Queen and Johnny's surprising decision to turn himself in, and his sad, hopeful question about whether his parents have asked about him. Tell about Dally's strange pleading voice as he warns Johnny that jail will harden him 'like it happened to me.' Then come to the top of Jay Mountain: the church on fire, the picnic kids missing, the faint yelling from inside, Pony smashing the window with a rock and climbing in, Johnny right behind him, the cinders raining down, the children huddled in the corner, Johnny tossing them through the window one by one. Tell about Pony and Johnny becoming separated in the smoke, the timber falling on Johnny, Dally clubbing Pony to put out the flames on his back, and Dally's burned arm. End with Pony in the hospital — Soda's bear hug, Darry crying in the doorway, and the line, 'I had taken the long way around, but I was finally home. To stay.'

Discussion Questions

1. Pony writes that Dally spoke 'in a pleading, high voice, using a tone I had never heard from him before.' What does Hinton want us to learn about Dally in this moment that we did not know before? Why do you think this softer Dally only comes out when he is talking to Johnny, and never to anyone else in the book?
2. Johnny tells Dally, 'I'm gonna turn myself in.' He says it because he can't stand making Pony hide forever, and because he wants to spare Darry and Soda the worry. Why is turning yourself in to face punishment a kind of bravery, and how is it different from the bravery of running into a burning building? Which one do you think is harder, and why?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide