More of The Outsiders...
I'm back, with another quote-filled post... haha. I got through another bit of the book, and I figured I'd make another post so that hopefully it won't be as long as the last one.
"The park was about two blocks square, with a fountain in the middle and a swimming pool for the little kids. The pool was empty now in the fall, but the fountain was going merrily. Tall elm trees made the park shadowy and dark, and it would have been a good hangout, but we preferred our vacant lot, and the Shepard outfit liked the alleys down by the tracks, so the park was left to lovers and little kids." That's just a good description. I'd never really thought of what it looked like, and this tells you pretty well. And plus, it has some information about the Shepard's gang, which is few and far between.
"A cool deadly bluff could sometimes shake them off, but not if they outnumbered you five to two and were drunk." Not sure why I like that one.
"[Johnny] was as white as a ghost and his eyes were wild-looking, like the eyes of an animal in a trap." More of that animal imagery...
"Johnny had a blank, tough look on his face--you'd have to know im to see the panic in his eyes." It's so easy to forget that Johnny is a greaser and comes off as a tough guy just as much as the rest of the gang to outsiders because of how much Ponyboy says that he looks like a "kicked puppy". But he doesn't look that way to other people, and I just found that interesting.
"[Johhny, after he killed the soc] was sitting next to me, one elbow on his knee, and staring straight ahead." That just struck me because of how calm he is described as. That pose just makes him seem cold and calculating and indifferent, though he isn't. He didn't lose his head.
"But Johnny, except for the fact that his hands were twitching, looked as cool as Darry ever had." More of what I put on the last one.
"Buck Merril was Dally's rodeo partner. He was the one who'd got Dally the job as a jockey for the Slash J. Buck raised a few quarter horses, and made most of his money on fixed races and a little bootlegging. I was under strict orders from both Darry and Soda not to get caught within ten miles of his place, which was dandy with me. I didn't like Buck Merril. He was a tall lanky cowboy with blond hair and buckteeth. Or he used to be bucktoothed before he had the front two knocked out in a fight. He was out of it. He dug Hank Williams--how gross can you get? This is good for getting some information on Buck, a very minor character. And plus, I just thought it was interesting that Ponyboy was told not to go there by "both Darry and Soda". Soda seems more like he'd be lenient and such, so obviously, Buck's is a pretty rough place to hang out if Soda doesn't want Ponyboy there.
"I knew Buck, and the only way you could get anything from him was to bully him. I guess that's why Dallas could handle him so easily, although Buck was in his mid-twenties and Dally was seventeen." More on Buck, and some on Dallas.
"'Me and Shepard had a run-in and I cracked some ribs. I just needed a place to lay over.' He rubbed his side ruefully. 'Ol' Tim sure can pack a punch. He won't be able to see outa one eye for a week.'" Another Tim mention, and I'm sorry, but if I cracked some ribs, I would be in the hospital, worrying like crazy. I guess it just goes to show how much tougher those guys were then.
"I'd heard about reformatories from Curly Shepard and I didn't want to go to one at all." A Curly mention, even rarer than Tim...
"I can lie so easily it spooks me sometimes--Soda says it comes from reading so much. But then, Two-Bit lies all the time too, and he never opens a book." Haha, Two-Bit...
"Then I heard a whistle, long and low, ending in a sudden high note. I knew that whistle well enough. It was used by us and the Shepard gang for 'Who's there?'" I just thought it was interesting that both the Shepards and the gang used it. I guess they kind of overlap some, like how the rumble was fought with both Shepard's gang and theirs.
"[My hair] was my pride. It was long and silky, just like Soda's, only a little redder. Our hair was tuff--we didn't have to use much grease in it. Our hair labeled us greasers, too--it was our trademark. The one thing we were proud of." It's like a symbol for them...
"It's just a way of trying to break us. They can't really do anything to guys like Curly Shepard or Tim; they've had about everything done to them. And they can't take anything away from them because they don't have anything in the first place. So they cut their hair." Again, that is just so sad. It does a great job at showing why the Shepards ended up the way they did, too.
"He went ahead and washed [his hair] anyway, using the bar of soap he'd bought. I was glad I had had to run away with him instead of Two-Bit or Steve or Dally. That would be the one thing they'd never htink of--soap." Haha. I don't think the rest of the guys would really care about soap and such. They're too rough to care if they're clean, or something. But JOhnny, as neglected as he is, remembers it.
"Of all of us, Dally was the one I liked least. He didn't have Soda's understanding or dash, or Two-Bit's humor, or even Darry's superman qualities. But I realized that these three appealed to me because they were like the heroes in the novels I read. Dally was real. I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me." Love that.
"Dally was scowling, and from long and painful experience I knew better than to talk to him when his eyes were blazing like that. I'd likely as not get clobbered over the head. That had happened before, just as it had happened to all the gang at one time or another. We rarely fought among ourselves--Darry was the unofficial leader since he kept his head best, Soda dnd Steve had been best friends since grade school and never fought, and Two-Bit was just too lazy to argue with anyone. Johnny kept his mouth shut too much to get into arguments, and nobody ever fought with Johnny. I kept my mouth shut, too. but Dally was a different matter. If something beefed him, he didn't keep quiet about it, and if you rubbed him the wrong way--look out. Not even Darry wanted to tangle with him. He was dangerous." It's a long ne, but it talks about the gang and explains it really well. I love that last part too, that even Darry, a 20-year-old guy who is the strongest of the bunch, for sure, doesn't want to fight with this seventeen-year-old hood. It just goes to show what Dally's bitterness does to him.
"Sent from heaven? Had he got a good look at Dallas?" That just struck me as funny--that even when he's just talking, Dally is "the mean-looking one" and he's very clearly a hood. He isn't acting, he really is that tough.
"Everyone in our neighboorhood, even the girls, smoked. Except for Darry, who was too proud of his athletic health to risk a cigarette, we had all started smoking at an early age. Johnny had been smoking since he was nine, Steve started at eleven. So no one thought it was unusual when I started. I was the only weed-fiend in my family--Soda smokes only to steady his nerves or when he wants to look tough." Nine!? That seems so hard to grasp for me... Then again, neither of my parents drink or smoke ever, so I guess it's just a really foreign concept to me.
I dont' have quotes for all the characters because this part focused on Johnny and Dally.
Darry: "Suddenly I realized, horrified, that Darry was crying. He didn't make a sound, but tears were running down his cheeks." He even cries in character... , "Darry did care about me, maybe as much as he cared about Soda, and because he cared he was trying too hard to make something of me." Ah, the big revealation. , "That was his silent fear then--of losing another person he loved. I remembered how close he and Dad had been and I wondered how I oculd ever thought him hard and unfeeling."
Soda: none
Ponyboy: none
Johnny: "'I think I like it b etter when the old man's hittin' me.' Johnny sighed. 'At least then I know he knows who I am. I walk in that house, and nobody says anything. I walk out, and nobody says anything. I stay away all night, and nobody notices.'" , "For the first time, I saw him as a stranger might see him. He looked hard and tough, because of his black T-shirt and his blue jeans and jacket, and because his hair was so heavily greased and so long." He IS a tough guy, just like the rest of the gang , "It amazed me how Johnny could get more meaning out of some of the stuff in [Gone With The Wind] than I could--I was supposed to be the deep one. Johnny had failed a year in school and never made good grades--he couldn't grasp anything that was shoved at him too fast, and I guess his teachers thought he was just plain dumb. But he wasn't. He was just a little slow to get things, and he liked to explore them once he did get them." I think that shows the differences between Johnny and Pony pretty well... that Johnny is more mature and maybe thinks out of the box better than Pony does. , "Johnny had a deathly fear of cops." , "Johnny was a good fighter and could play it cool, but he was sensitive and that isn't a good way to be when you're a greaser." , "[Saving the kids from the burning church] was the only time I can think of when I saw him without that defeated, suspicious look in his eyes. He looked like he was having the time of his life." So when he's helping someone else, he's happiest.
Two-Bit: "'Two-Bit shoulda been in that little one-horse store. Man, we're in the middle of nowhere; the nearest house is two miles away. Things were layin' out wide open, just waitin' for somebody slick like Two-Bit to come and pick 'em up. He coulda walked out with half the store.'" , "'Two-Bit got jumped a few days ago. Darry and me [Dally] came along in time, but he wasn't havin' too much trouble. Two-Bit's a good fighter.'" It just seems strange to me that he's got this goofy side, but also a tough, mean one. He's so three dimensional...
Steve: none
Dallas: "Dallas Winston could do anything." Except keep living without Johnny, apparently. It's just so tragic... , "Tow-headed and shifty eyed, Dally was anything but handsome. Yet in his hard face there was character, pride, and a savage defiance of the world." , "He could never love Cherry Valence back. It would be a miracle if Dally loved anything. The fight for self-preservation had hardened him beyond caring." , "You might have thought it was Dally who fixed those races for Buck, being a jockey and all, but it wasn't. The last guy to suggest it lost three teeth. It's the truth. Dally rode the ponies honestly and did his best to win. It was the only thing Dally did honestly." The only thing... that seems so strange, but it shows a lot about his character. Something about how he's completely dishonest when it comes to anything else, but those races... almost like he wants to do his best by the horses or something. Like he can relate to them, animals, better than he can to people. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Still though, it caught my eye. , "'One night I saw Dally gettin' picked up by the fuzz, and he kept real cool and calm the whole time. They was gettin' him for breakin' out the windows in the school building, and it was Two-Bit who did that. And Dally knew it. But he just took the sentence without battin' an eye or even denyin' it. That's gallant.'" He's loyal... , "[in Soda's letter] I know Dally knows where you are, but you know him. He keeps his trap shut and won't tell me nothing." , "Dally always did like to drive fast, as if he didn't care whether he got where he was going or not, and we came down the red dirt road off Jay Mountain doing eighty five." , "Dally was chewing the corner of his ID card, which gave his age as twenty-one so he could buy liquor." I just thought that was funny because I catch myself chewing the corners of my ID card all the time... of course, it's not a fake though. , "Dally could take it--Dally was of the breed that could take anything, because he was hard and tough, and when he wasn't, he could turn hard and tough."
<3
Tiffany