Never Changing

Authors Note: In this following piece, I will be discussing how Dallas Winston from “The Outsiders” is a static character. There are many reasons and examples from the book that make Dally the most static character from my point of view.

Throughout the entire book of “The Outsiders”, Dally had never changed. His attitude and the way people thought of him had always stayed the same. He was the most stubborn and self-centered one out of their whole group and that’s how people always thought of him. Dally is a static character because he never became sympathetic even after conflicts had happened.

In the beginning when everything was considered normal: the Greasers didn’t have empathy for the Socs and the Socs could care less about the Greasers. After Johnny had killed Bob, everything changed. There were fewer fights between the Greasers and Socs, but mostly, after Johnny and Ponyboy were recognized for saving the children in the burning church, people changed. Randy, who was Bob’s best friend, was a mean guy in the beginning of the book, but he realized the Greasers weren’t so different from the Socs than he thought after he had a conversation with Ponyboy. As some people were changing their minds about each other, Dally stayed the same. He never considered Socs as anything but rich snobs and nice clothed people who brag about the size of their house and the amount of money they have.

Next, while Dally, Ponyboy, and Johnny were on their way home, they saw that the church they had been staying in was burning down because of a fire. People had been surrounding the church with mothers’ crying dreadfully. Ponyboy and Johnny hopped out of the car and ran to the people, asking what was going on. They told them their children were in the church, so Ponyboy and Johnny went in the church to go save them. Dally was angry at the two of them because he didn’t care about the kids’ safety. He didn’t want to help the children and become recognized as a hero, he just wanted to get back to where they live and smoke a cigarette.

Lastly, while Ponyboy and Dally had visited Johnny in the hospital from getting excruciating burns from the fire, Johnny had perished. Dally was heartbroken because Johnny was the person he loved and cared about the most out of anyone in the world. He let all of his anger get to him and had himself shot by the police. Just as Dally died, Ponyboy said “Dally didn’t die a Hero. He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he’d die someday”. This is one of the most important key quotes in the book because it shows that Dally never changed from the beginning of the book to the moment he died.

To conclude, all of these reasons state how Dally is the most static character in the book. Dallas Winston was just the kind of person that too many bad things had happened to, and he thought that he could never turn his life around even though he never considered it in the first place because he liked being a bad and tough guy which partly made him a static character.