Dally Winston In The Outsiders

Dallas/Dally Winston has a very subtle way of expressing how he changes over the course of the novel, The Outsiders. At first impression, he seems rude, bad-mannered, and mean. He seems to not care for anything at all in the world. But later on, as you get to know the greasers, a reckless group of boys that stick together no matter what, Dally gets to learn how to care and how not to keep emotions bottled up. Dally grew up on the wild side of New York. He had to teach himself how to be independent and deal with situations on his own, since all his parents did to him was reject him and be ignorant to his doings.

Dallas Winston was careless of what he did. No matter what, he had no regrets. He just wanted to show that nobody could break him and he could break as many rules as he wanted. In fact, he went around trying to break rules. “Dally hated to do things the legal way. He liked to show that he didn't care whether there was a law or not. He went around trying to break laws“ (pg 20). Dally likes to show that he can’t be changed by authority and wanted to show it by breaking laws and not caring for anyone or anything. He is careless for his actions and if Dallas Winston wants to do something there is no point of stopping him because he always gets

"Oh, damnit, Johnny, don't die, please don't die... He suddenly bolted through the door and down the hall.” (page 127). We can see here that Dally finally had a “breaking point” as Two-bit recalled it (page 130). I think that Dally couldn’t bear losing the one thing he loved, Johnny. At the end of the book, you get the impression that Dally felt that it was his job to protect him and make sure that he kept his innocence. Now he feels like Johnny died because of him and he couldn’t live with that guilt. Dallas wasn’t used to emotions, so instead of facing them and getting through it, he wanted to end it and run