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Outsiders Analysis. Chapters 7 & 8. Theme: Dreaming. Once again, Ponyboy has a difficult situation to deal with, and he does so by escaping into dreams, by pretending the situation is different.
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Outsiders Analysis Chapters 7 & 8
Theme: Dreaming • Once again, Ponyboy has a difficult situation to deal with, and he does so by escaping into dreams, by pretending the situation is different. • After hearing the news that, should Johnny live he will be crippled for the rest of his life, Ponyboy tells himself, "I'm dreaming. I'll wake up at home or in the church and everything'll be like it used to be." • But he has to admit that "I didn't believe myself." • He finds it impossible to convince himself of an alternate truth, although by the next chapter he will have almost completely convinced himself of it.
Building Bridges • In Chapter 7, Randy becomes one of the people who appreciate sunsets. • Ponyboy realizes, "Cherry had said her friends were too cool to feel anything, and yet she could remember watching sunsets. • Randy was supposed to be too cool to feel anything, and yet there was pain in his eyes." • As he tells Ponyboy that he is tired of fighting and is going to leave town instead of going to the rumble, Ponyboy remembers Cherry saying "Things are rough all over," and understands what she meant. • It is evident that Ponyboy makes the link between Randy, as more than a Soc, and himself, as more than a Greaser, when he says, "You would have saved those kids if you had been there. You'd have saved them the same as we did.”
Building Bridges • Randy doesn’t know why he is telling pony all this, but it is like he has to • He starts to cry in front of him • “Thanks grease…I don’t mean that. Thanks kid” • “He ain’t a soc. He’s just a guy. He wanted to talk.” • “Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.”
Theme: Eyes • Eyes continue to be an important indicator of personality in these chapters. • When Randy talks to Ponyboy in the car, Ponyboy recognizes "pain in his eyes." • Ponyboy also points out the difference between Johnny and his mother as reflected in their eyes: "Johnnycake's eyes were fearful and sensitive; hers were cheap and hard." • The last thing Ponyboy notes in the chapter is Cherry’s eyes, saying, "She had green eyes.”
Bridging the Gap • In Chapter 8, the gap between Socs and Greasers is bridged for Ponyboy yet again, this time because of the connection he sees between Bob and Randy's relationship and that of Soda and Steve. • Cherry explains how upset Randy is after Bob's death, and Ponyboy thinks, "What if one of them saw the other killed? Would that make them stop fighting? No, I thought, maybe it would make Soda stop, but not Steve. He'd go on hating and fighting. Maybe that was what Bob would have done if it had been Randy instead of him.”
Foreshadowing • Foreshadowing reappears in Chapter 8, and Ponyboy is conscious of it as a character as well as as the narrator. • As he and Two-bit ride the bus home, he thinks, "I had a sick feeling in my stomach and it wasn't from being ill. It was the same kind of helplessness I'd felt that night Darry yelled at me for going to sleep in the lot. I had the same deathly fear that something was going to happen that none of us could stop. As we got off the bus I finally said it. 'Tonight - I don't like it one bit.'” • Ponyboy's stance as narrator looking back on the past melds with his stance within his own story - that is, as protagonist. • It is as though the purely literary use of foreshadowing here takes on a greater significance, and as though Ponyboy changes the past by observing it. • The echoes of impending doom are pure pulp, but they complicate Ponyboy's role as both storyteller and participant, blurring the line between the two.
