Johnny Cade was a golden light in the tunnel of his dark town. In the book The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, there are two prominent gangs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the greasers and the Socs. The greasers are a crew of teenage guys with obvious complications, while the Socs are a group of the society with hidden problems. Johnny was a part of the greasers, he was 16 years old but far above that mentally. On the outside he was young with a small presence. Johnny was always visibly nervous and quiet. However a series of events caused him to show how courageous and keen he was. Johnny starts off hiding in a cage, he unleashes his potential when his walls come down and he shows just how brave he really is. In the beginning of the book, Johnny was portrayed …show more content…
He needed time to think about the material he was getting, and when Johnny and Pony were at the church, all they had was time. Pony would read him Gone With The Wind, “It amazed me how Johnny could get more meaning out of some stuff in there than I could… Johnny had failed a year in school and never made good grades - he couldn’t grasp anything that was shoved at him too fast” (Hinton 75). Johnny was genuinely intelligent behind his anxious facade, and Ponyboy finally realized that fact when Johnny was appreciating the minor details of the book that he had ignored. Furthermore, Johnny was able to tell reality from fantasy, which was something Pony struggled with, and was part of the reason that he admired Dally with such intensity. Dally was real and Johnny saw him for who he was. He showed this grasp of reality at the church while they were still in trouble and Johnny had to think on his feet, “They’ll have our descriptions in the paper. We can’t fit ‘em” (Hinton 71). This demonstrated that Johnny had common sense and knew how to protect Pony and him. Johnny may not have been book smart, or had the chance to be, but he was street smart for sure. However Johnny would not be content with being street or book smart, he really just wanted to be a