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Copywork
About This Passage
Cherry Valance is sitting in her Corvette by the vacant lot. Pony has just demanded that she go visit Johnny in the hospital, since it was her boyfriend Bob who beat up Johnny in the first place. Cherry refuses, and the way she refuses is the heart of the chapter. She does not say Johnny was wrong. She does not say Bob was right. She says the truth is messier than either of those — Bob 'asked for it' and was also 'sweet sometimes, and friendly,' and the drunk Bob who beat up Johnny was also the Bob she loved. She cannot face the boy who killed him. Hinton uses Cherry's broken sentences to argue that real people are made of more than one thing, and that grief is harder when the person you grieve was partly cruel.
'I couldn't,' she said in a quiet, desperate voice. 'He killed Bob. Oh, maybe Bob asked for it. I know he did. But I couldn't ever look at the person who killed him. You only knew his bad side. He cou...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Chapter 8 in detail: the visit to Johnny in the hospital (Two-Bit's pleading, the Gone with the Wind request, Johnny's mother arriving, Johnny's collapse), the visit to Dally and the switchblade transfer, the bus ride home with Pony's fever and the conversation about Darry being 'too smart to be a greaser,' and the encounter with Cherry by the vacant lot. Pay attention to how Cherry's refusal to visit Johnny is structured, and how the chapter ends with Pony's offered sunset.
Discussion Questions
- Hinton uses Two-Bit's switchblade as a kind of measuring stick for love. Trace the chapter's careful preparation — how the knife is described, how it was acquired, how it is treated as a showpiece — and then examine the moment of transfer. What is the author achieving by spending an entire paragraph on the knife before Two-Bit hands it to Dally?
- Cherry's refusal to visit Johnny rests on an idea she struggles to put into words: that you can know a person was wrong AND still be unable to face the person who killed him. Find Cherry's exact phrasing in the chapter and explain how she balances her honesty about Bob ('maybe Bob asked for it') with her refusal of Pony's request. What is she saying about the difference between judgment and grief?
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Making little or no sound; calm or restrained
Item 2
Feeling such hopelessness that one is ready to do anything to change a situation
Item 3
Caused the death of
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Critical Thinking
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