Dallas Winston

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Dallas Winston is a character in the S.E. Hinton novel The Outsiders.

Dally is part of the social class known as the greasers. He is described as being seventeen years old, with white blond hair and an elfish face. He is originally from New York City and was arrested at the age of ten. The narrator states that he is wild and dangerous.

In the opening scene of the book, Ponyboy is jumped by the Socs, the rich kids from the other side of town. After the greasers chase them away, we are introduced to Dally, where we discover he has just been released from a jail early, for good behavior. We also learn that his on-again off-again girlfriend Sylvia was cheating on him while he was in jail, and they have now broken up.

Dally, Ponyboy and Johnny sneak into a local drive-in, and Dally begins harassing a pretty Soc with flaming red hair named Cherry Valance. When Johnny tells him to leave her alone, Dally angrily leaves, and Ponyboy tells the reader that if it had been anyone else, Dally would have flattened them, but Johnny is the gang's pet, as well as Dally's.

After Johnny kills a Soc later that night while Ponyboy was a bystander, they run to Dally for help. He gives them money and a gun, and tells them of an abandoned church they can hide in. When Dally comes to get them a week later, Johnny informs Dallas he wants to go back and turn himself in. On the way back, Dally confesses that he doesn't want Johnny to go to jail and become tough and hardened against life as he has. Moments later they discover the church they hid out in is on fire and children are trapped inside. While Ponyboy and Johnny go in to help, Dally only comes to help when Johnny is in danger.

Dally is mildly injured in the fire, with a burned arm, while Johnny is severely injured. After the big rumble, which Dallas escapes from the hospital to join, he returns to find that Johnny is dying. Ponyboy (the narrator), realizes that Johnny is the only thing that Dally has ever loved, and without him, Dally can't handle life.

Dally then robs a store, and aims his unloaded gun at police, who shot and killed him by suicide by police.

We learn little about Dally's life in the book - we know he has a father that doesn't care if he is alive or not, he prefers KOOL cigarettes, doesn't like wearing hair oil and races horses to make extra money. He is respected, but not liked, by the narrator Ponyboy, and idolized by the sensitive Johnny Cade. His best friend is Tim Shepard, the leader of an allied gang in downtown Tulsa.

In the movie adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola, the part of Dally is played by Matt Dillon.

[edit] See also

S.E. Hinton Website [1]