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Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Outsiders, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Divided Communities
Empathy
Preserving Childhood Innocence
Self-Sacrifice and Honor
Individual Identity
Summary
Analysis
The park is deserted. As Johnny and Ponyboy walk and talk, the blue Mustang suddenly appears. Bob, his friend Randy, and three other Socs jump out of the car. All of them are drunk. Johnny, terrified, pulls out his switchblade and Ponyboy wishes he had the broken bottle. Bob insults greasers by calling them white trash with long hair. Ponyboy, furious, responds that Socs are white trash with mustangs and madras (plaid) shirts, and spits at the Socs.
Ponyboy's desire for the broken bottle suggests that the conflict around him is making it harder for him to preserve his inclination towards nonviolence. Notice how, once again, when it comes to conflicts between the two gangs, the participants focus on the opposing gang's superficial characteristics.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
The Socs attack. One forces Ponyboy's head underwater in a nearby fountain. Ponyboy blacks out. When he comes to, the Socs are gone and he's on the pavement next to Johnny and Bob's dead body. Johnny says, "I killed him." Johnny's switchblade is covered in blood.
Johnny and Ponyboy go from the youngest and most childish members of the greasers to people who have fought and killed Socs. They are forced to grow up in an instant. The question is how they'll deal with it.
Active
Themes
Ponyboy panics, but Johnny is calm. He decides that they should go to Dally for help. They find Dally at a party at the house of Dally's rodeo partner, Buck Merril. When he learns what's happened, Dally gives them warm clothes, fifty dollars, a loaded gun, and directions to a hide-out in an abandoned church in the small rural town of Windrixville. He asks Ponyboy if Darry and Sodapop know what happened. Ponyboy tells him not to say anything to Darry.
Active
Themes
Hidden in a boxcar on a train they've hopped to Windrixville, Johnny looks at Dally's gun and wonders why Dally gave it to him, saying he could never use it. For his part, Ponyboy, wearing the warm "hoodlum's jacket" that Dally gave him, can't believe that the two of them are fleeing a murder. He thinks about Johnny's kind quiet demeanor and marvels at the enormity of their current situation.
Active
Themes
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At the Windrixville station, Ponyboy realizes how his and Johnny's appearance make them look like hoods. He misses home, and thinks about how his dream of moving to the country has come true but not in the way he planned it. As soon they find the abandoned church, they immediately drop off to sleep.
Active
Themes
