Why do the Greasers have a great strength in friendship? Why do the Greasers stick together like brothers? Why is Dally feeling hopeless as to die after he knows Johnny was died? The friendship between Dally and Johnny demonstrate the great strength friendship in the Greasers. The people who have the same personality come together because they enjoy the same thing and that is why different people like to join different groups to share their feelings and problems. After I finished reading the novel of ¡ The Outsiders;t, I realized that although Dally and Johnny have grown up in different cities, they like to join together because they have a lot of the same habits, notions and moral qualities. They are both low educated, brave, and lacking in love, so that they are sticking together like glue.
From the novel, we can see Dally needs education, and so does Johnny. First of all, Dally does not go to school in New York City, so his life becomes worse. He has a lot of files at the police station because he used to be arrested. He gets drunk, lies, cheats and steals. He does many bad things. Johnny does not go to school either. His family is poor, and his parents do not allow him to go to school, often beating and kicking him out. No school could accept the Greasers who live out of the cycle of ordinary society. Second, Dally has spent his childhood on the street, and Johnny has too.
When the other kids are studying in school, Dally is fighting with his gang. He has spent three years on the wild side of New York and has been arrested at the age of ten. Johnny learns smoking and drinking but not reading and writing in the gang. Just like Ponyboy says, “Sixteen years on the streets you can learn a lot, but all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you could see a lot, but all the wrong sights, not the sights you want to see. Dally and Johnny have learnt a lot of bad things from the street. That’s why their education is so low. After Johnny hides from the cops with Ponyboy, he sure likes the book of Gone with the Windi±, although he does not know anything about the Civil War and even less about plantations, and Ponyboy has to explain a lot of it to him. It is a pity that Dally and Johnny could not take part in the common education systems.
In fact, when Greasers deal with their own problems, they become even braver as not fit to their ages, especially Dally and Johnny. First, when they hear the screams come out from the burning church, Johnny rushes into the red hell to rescue the poor kids. He does not think about himself that he might die or be injured even though he is only fourteen years old, and he gives the first chance to Ponyboy by pushing him out of the window.
Dally tries to drag Johnny and the other kids out of the window and then he burns one arm pretty badly. Later they are reported in the paper as “the heroesit. Furthermore, both Dally and Johnny are good fighters in their gang. Dally joins in the fight that is held by Socs and Greasers all over the city, even though one of his arms is still broken. In the same way, on the night that Ponyboy is nearly drowned by the Socs. Last, Dally could withstand every bad thing, and Johnny also becomes strong. Once Two-Bit has broken the school windows and Dally knows that. But when the fuzz comes to pick up Dally, Johnny sees him keeping real cool and calm the whole time. Johnny starts to not care about anything after he kills Bob. Even if he might die, he does not mind it when he is in the burning church rescuing the kids. The two young guys have showed the same great courage by withstanding their troubles, no doubt about that.
The final similarity between Dally and Johnny is that neither Dally nor Johnny has a contented love. First, Dally is similar to Johnny in that both of them do not have real families in their lives. They live together, but have never experienced the love from a warm family. Even if Johnny has a family, he is kicked out and is not allowed to come back any more. By the same token, Dally joins the Greasers gang at an early age, and so does Johnny. The street lives make Dally and Johnny become tough, and also change them to hate the Socs and the unfair world. They stick together as brothers, live as a family and fight as an army, but the story tells us some of them are only at the age of thirteen or fourteen. Finally, Johnny’s parents treat him badly, almost the same as Dally; s parents do. Not only does Johnny; s father always beats him up inhumanely, but also his mother ignores him.
And Ponyboy says that he would have run away i’a million times; if his gang has not been there. Johnny’s parents do not mind if he is back home or not, alive or not, and he often has to sleep in the park. Dally sees a reflection in Johnny, so he sympathizes with him and takes care of him. As we discussed above, they really need to get more sincere love from their relatives. At least they hope to.
As far as you can see, the indestructible friendship between Dally and Johnny is a good model of the greasers. Obviously, both Dally and Johnny are low educated, brave but also lacking in love. Also the bad society during that time makes a lot of teenagers; lives go down hill like Dally; s and Johnny, s. It forces them to join gangs to fight and not to attend to school. They grow up on the outside of society, they are not looking for fight, and they are looking to belong.
