Character Analysis Of Daly In The Outsiders

Everybody has a soft side, they just don’t always chose to show it. Some people keep theirs a secret, as a defense mechanism because they are afraid of getting hurt. In S.E Hinton’s The Outsiders, one of the main characters, Dally, doesn’t reveal his until the very end. He has been hurt before, and is scared that if he lets it show, the same thing will happen again. However, very soon after he reveals his soft side, he is hurt worse than ever before. In the beginning of the book, we only think Dally is a big tough guy who doesn’t care about anybody else. Dally has had a very tough life. His parents “walked out on him” in a way, and his only family is the rest of the gang. Since he had no one to tell him what to do, he was usually in some

Besides from everything he did, he wasn’t exactly the friendliest face.For example, Pony says that “He had quite a reputation. They have a file on him down at the police station. He had been arrested, he got drunk, he rode in rodeos, lied, cheated, stole, rolled drunks, jumped small kids-he did everything. I didn’t like him, but he was smart and you had to respect him.” (11) All of these qualities are not very good ones to have. If you go out and get drunk every night, and lie and cheat, my guess is that you aren’t the most caring person in the world. This description of Dally makes him out to be a low life bum, who gets drunk and arrested frequently, which in the beginning of the book he was. The caring side of Johnny has not been revealed yet, so that’s why the only descriptions of Dally we get right now, make him look like a

Dally sees two girls, Cherry and Marcia, and decides to “use his moves” on him. Once you read this you will see that they didn’t exactly work so well. According to the text, “‘Take your feet off my chair and shut your trap.’ Dally Merely looked at her and kept his feet where they were. ‘Who’s gonna make me?’” This scene in the book really shows how “tough” Dally is in the beginning of the book. The author wants us to think that Dally is a tough guy, and that he doesn’t care about other people. That’s why in this scene dally is obnoxious, and rude, and is refusing to be nice. In this situation, an “untough’ guy would listen to what Cherry said, respect her wishes, and try to be respectful for the rest of the time. But clearly, that is not what Dally did. Even when Cherry poured her soda on Dally, Dally kept on going. All of these things are actions that your typical “tough guy” would do, and that’s why we think this way of him right