Summary
Outside, Johnny holds up a cracked mirror and shows Ponyboy his newly-dyed blond hair. “Jeez, this really makes me look tough,” Ponyboy says sarcastically and takes a drag of his cigarette. Johnny then hands Ponyboy the knife to cut his hair. Nearby a small rabbit rubs its eyes with its paws next to the cracked mirror as Ponyboy begins to cut Johnny’s hair. The scene cuts to the two boys’ reflection in a pool of water in front of the church. “Well, I guess we’re disguised,” Johnny says as the camera gets closer to the reflection, both of the boys’ reflections upside down in the water. Ponyboy expresses dislike of his haircut, calling it a “Halloween costume you can’t get out of,” but Johnny insists that they have to get used to it. Ponyboy throws a branch into the water.
In voiceover, Ponyboy details that the following four days were the longest of his life, as the screen shifts from ripples in the water to a shot of the church at night. Inside, the boys lie beside one another while an owl hoots from an overhead beam. Sensing a presence, Ponyboy whispers to Johnny that there is a “monster outside,” and the viewer sees some kind of animal climbing on the outside of the church: a raccoon clawing the siding. Johnny urges him to go back to sleep, and the scene again shifts to the body of water outside of the church, transitioning the scene to the following day. Inside the church, Ponyboy reads Gone with the Wind as Johnny sips on a Coca-Cola. The scene that Ponyboy reads aloud is a particularly gruesome description of a battle in the Civil War. Abruptly the scene shifts to the outdoors, where the two boys have set a rabbit trap, made of a crate propped up on a stick. As a rabbit approaches the trap, the boys run towards it, attempting to catch it. Then later, the boys play cards and smoke cigarettes. Later still, Ponyboy reads Gone with the Wind while Johnny lies on a platform holding a smoking cigarette, eventually dropping it in sleep. The camera shows a large spiderweb above them, before the shot abruptly shifts to the church steeple against a purple evening sky.
We see Ponyboy’s handwriting, as he writes the following sentence: “One day I woke up earlier than usual. The church was colder than ever…” and we see the boys walking in silhouette outside near a fence. Watching the sunrise, the boys marvel at the beauty of the rising sun, which appears golden through the mist. Johnny says, “It’s too bad it can’t stay like that all the time,” to which Ponyboy responds, “Nothing gold can stay.” This confuses Johnny and Ponyboy continues: “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold, her early leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour…Then leaf subsides to leaf, so Eden sank to grief, so dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay.” When Johnny asks what it is, Ponyboy responds that it’s a Robert Frost poem. Johnny responds, “I never noticed colors and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It’s kinda like they were never there before.” Ponyboy confides that he only trusts Johnny and Sodapop enough to tell them about the clouds and the sunsets, before adding, “Maybe Cherry Valance.” The figures in silhouette walk back towards the church.
Back at the church, we see the debris of the boys’ residence in the church—rats nibble at some left-out food—as we hear a vehicle approaching the church. The camera pans up to reveal Ponyboy lying on a bench, as a figure walks along the side of the church, banging and peeking in through the cracks in the wood. It is Dally, there to rescue them. Coming through a door, Dallas greets Ponyboy and laughs at his newly-blond hair. Before he can answer any of the boys’ questions, he asks if they want to get some food, and asks Johnny for a cigarette. Dallas hands Ponyboy a note from his brother, Sodapop. When Ponyboy asks Dallas how Sodapop knows where he is, Dallas tells him that Sodapop pressed him for answers. Ponyboy reads the letter to himself, and we hear Sodapop in voiceover, apologizing on Darry’s behalf for hitting him, and bringing him up to speed on what’s happening in town. Sodapop writes that Dallas got brought in by the cops, and that he hopes Ponyboy will come back and turn himself in soon. Growing anxious, Johnny asks Dallas for updates on what’s happened since they left, and Ponyboy asks why he was brought into the cops. Dallas explains that he knows the policemen well, and that he led them astray by saying Ponyboy and Johnny were on their way to Texas. They leave and go to get something to eat.
Dallas’ new car bumps down a gravel road, and Dallas drives recklessly with no hands, swerving in front of another car and into the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. Pulling into a spot, Dallas tells them that Bob had a lot of friends in town, and that because of this Dallas has started carrying a gun for protection. When Ponyboy protests, he shows them the gun and assures them that it isn’t loaded, but they are interrupted by a small girl who asks them for 15 cents. Dallas sends her away, eventually becoming agitated when she doesn’t take the hint, fearing that she might have seen the gun. Dallas then tells the boys that the Greasers and the Socs are gonna have it out in a vacant lot the following evening, and that they have a “spy.” He reveals that Cherry showed up at the vacant lot a few nights ago, and said she would testify that the Socs were drunk and looking for a fight on the night Johnny killed Bob. As Dallas goes on and on about how cute Cherry is, wondering whether she likes him (even though she continually rejects him), Ponyboy becomes frustrated and throws his sandwich out of the car.
When Dallas begins to ask what they can do in the country, Johnny says he wants to go back and turn himself in, so that they have a better chance of being let off easy. Johnny insists that it was self-defense, that Pony and Cherry can testify on his behalf, and that he’ll give Dallas back his gun so he doesn’t get into any trouble. Dallas asks him if he’s sure, and Johnny says he’s sure, because he doesn’t want to keep Ponyboy away from his family, even if he’s not sure that his own parents even care. When Johnny asks if his parents asked the gang about him, Dallas says they didn’t, but that the boys were worried about him. Dallas then becomes defensive, suggesting that his own parents don’t care about him either, but it doesn’t bother him. Exasperated, Dallas drives, lecturing Johnny on the dangers of jail, saying, “You get mean in jail. I just don’t want to see that happen to you like it happened to me.”
As they approach the abandoned church, they see it is on fire, and a schoolbus full of kids is gathered around it. Driving up to the burning church, they see a school group gathered outside. Against Dallas’ urging, Ponyboy jumps out to get a closer look, and hears one of the teachers of the school group tell the other that some of the children are missing. Dallas yells for Ponyboy to come back to the car, and as one of the teachers sees Ponyboy start to go towards the burning church, he yells at him to stay back and not risk getting hurt, but Ponyboy runs into the church anyway. Encouraged by Ponyboy, Johnny runs after him.
The fire is getting worse, and as the female teacher holds the children back, Ponyboy kicks at the front door of the church, as Johnny approaches. When Johnny throws a large rock into the side of the church, he makes an opening and giant plumes of black smoke come pouring out. Inside, the church is ablaze, and the owl that lives in the eaves screeches and flies around, startling the young boys. Through the giant flames, the boys see a group of screaming children in the corner. Outside, Dallas watches as frightened children clutch each other. He busts down the part of the wall that the boys already opened. As the female teacher screams, Dallas runs into the building as burning beams begin to fall, where he finds Johnny and Ponyboy attempting to save the children. Johnny and Ponyboy begin handing him kids one by one, so they can escape from the church. When Ponyboy tries to pick up a small girl, she bites his hand. They keep handing children to Dallas, who coughs as he pulls them out of the church. The roof begins to fall as Dallas calls to Johnny, urging him to get out of the church. Ponyboy’s arm has now caught on fire, and Dallas pulls him out. Johnny stays in the church, getting hit by a burning beam, but determined to save a remaining child. Outside, Ponyboy rolls onto the ground, his arm on fire, as children whimper nearby at the sight. Johnny screams for Dallas from inside the church and he goes to try to save him, but the church steeple falls in just as he enters.
The scene shifts to the perspective of a car, following a cop car, its sirens blaring. In the backseat, Ponyboy sits up, with an oxygen ventilator in his nose, covered in ash, and asks after Johnny and Dallas. The arm of an unseen man pushes him back down, assuring him that his friends are alright and that they are behind them in another ambulance. As the camera shifts up to reveal the speaker, we see that it is the male teacher from earlier, who marvels at the boys’ heroism and bravery. Ponyboy simply says, “We’re greasers.” At first the man takes this as a joke, but soon realizes that Ponyboy is being serious.
At the hospital, an ash-faced Ponyboy lights a cigarette, and the teacher from the ambulance turns to him—cigarette in hand—and tells him he ought not to be smoking cigarettes. When Ponyboy calls him on his hypocrisy, the man merely says that he is older than Ponyboy and has been smoking a long time, as Johnny and Dallas go by on gurneys. Dallas leans forward in his gurney, pointing at Ponyboy and saying, “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’m gonna kill you.” Ponyboy takes a drag from his cigarette and leans his head against the wall as Sodapop walks down the hall. Ponyboy runs to hug Sodapop who is happy to see him and makes fun of his hair. Close behind him is Darry, to whom Ponyboy also runs, apologizing. Darry breaks down, saying that he thought he had died like their parents, and the three brothers hug each other, relieved to be reunited. Darry too laughs at Ponyboy’s blonde hair. Back at home that night, Darry carries a sleeping Ponyboy into the house.
The next day, Ponyboy makes eggs in the kitchen, as Two-Bit and Steve come in the front door. While Ponyboy is still holding a frying pan with sizzling eggs, the two guys come up behind him and jostle him to welcome him home. Two-Bit makes fun of his blonde hair, while Steve tells him he saw him in the paper, and asks “What’s it like being a hero?” Ponyboy looks at the paper Steve hands him and sees pictures of him, Johnny, and Dallas, with a headline about how they are “delinquents turned to heroes.” The article also informs Ponyboy that they are charging Johnny for manslaughter. As he reads on, Ponyboy realizes that the event also led to the discovery of the Curtis boys’ living situation—that is, that they are without guardians—and outlines the possibility of Soda and him being sent to live in a boys’ home. Throwing the paper onto the table, Ponyboy storms out of the room.
Analysis
In this section of the film, we see Ponyboy and Johnny finally escaping the gang violence of their neighborhood and finding a new version of normalcy. While the two boys live in an abandoned church, filled with animals and hardly suitable for inhabitation, they find a refreshing rhythm in Wintrixville, and are able to live peacefully for once in their lives. While in town they must live in fear of danger around every corner, whether it is related to the gang of which they are a part or to their home life, in the country they sleep, smoke, play cards, read, and admire the beauty of nature. Earlier Johnny dreamed of a place where they could escape the dangers of life in the neighborhood, and now the two boys have found it. While it comes at a great cost, because Johnny is wanted for manslaughter, the country is represented as a respite.
The natural world is depicted as unruly and wild, but it is peaceful compared to their lives in the neighborhood. Deer, owls, rabbits, and raccoons live beside them in the abandoned church, but the boys are never threatened by this wildlife. The real savagery exists in their own neighborhood, and we can see through the contrast of these scenes in the country that the gangs are far more animalistic than any animals the boys encounter in Wintrixville. The boys seem almost to blend in to the animal kingdom, bored but content, unsure of their future but safe.
An emotional climax takes place when the boys awaken early to watch the sunrise together. In an uncharacteristically reflective moment in the film, Johnny and Ponyboy marvel at the beauty of the sunrise, and discuss the prettiness of its gold hues. In this moment we see the bond between the two boys, and we learn more about the extent of Ponyboy's literary leanings, as he recites many lines of Frost poetry by memory. Johnny notices how reflective and thoughtful Ponyboy is, and marvels at the fact that Ponyboy is able to stop and notice the simple beauties of nature. Without Ponyboy's influence, he suggests, he would hardly even notice the sunrise.
The pastoral peacefulness cannot last for long, however, and the fire at the abandoned church changes the course of the boys' lives far more than even the murder of Bob the Soc. Faced with the flaming church, and the news of young helpless children inside, Johnny and Ponyboy rush to help. Springing into heroic motion, the boys are intent on saving the children, where others may not have been so brave. The children inside the burning church might be interpreted to represent the innocence that the two boys have left behind in their pursuit of a life in the Greaser gang. Therefore, it is with dogged determination that they seek to save them. While Johnny, Ponyboy, and Dally all lead reckless and irresponsible lives, sometimes that recklessness can lead towards a higher ethical proactivity.
The heroism of their act belies the reputations they have as Greasers. In an evocative scene in the halls of the hospital, an ash-covered Ponyboy lights a cigarette in front of the kindly elementary school teacher whose students he helped to save. The teacher marvels at Ponyboy's heroism and bravery, but Ponyboy insists to the man that he, Dally, and Johnny are just Greasers, which the man can hardly believe. In this section of the film, we see that while the Greasers are hardened by life's hard knocks, they act in service of their heart, with bravery and determination. Just because they are Greasers does not mean they are unethical or cowardly. In fact, quite the opposite, in this case.
