Ponyboy Curtis
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I have light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes. Pony boy wrote this story as a project for Mr. Syme's class, one of his teachers at school. Ponyboy is also on the track team at school and is a very good runner. He is also very smart but he doesn’t always use his brain.
Johnny Cade
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If you can picture a little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers, you'll have Johnny. He was the youngest, next to me, smaller than the rest, with a slight build. He had big black eyes in a dark tanned face; his hair was jet-black and heavily greased and combed to the side, but it was so long that it fell in shaggy bangs across his forehead. He had a nervous, suspicious lokk in his eyes, and that beating he got form the Sos didn't help matters. He was the gang's pet, everyone's kid brother. His fathre was always beating him up, and his mother ignored him, except when she was hacked off at something, and then you could hear her yelling at him clear down at our house. I think he hated that worse than getting whipped. He would have run away a million times if we hadn't bbeen there. If it had't been there. IF it hadn't been for the gang, Johnny would never have known what love and affection are.
Sodapop Curtis
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Soda is handsomer than anyone else I know. Not like Darry-- Soda's movie-star kind of handsome, the kind that people stop on the street to watch go by. He's not as tall as Darry, and he's a little slimmer, but he has a finely drown, sensitive face that somehow manages to be reckless and thoughtful at the same time. He's got dark-gold hair that he combs back-- long and silky and straight-- and in the summer the sun bleaches it to a shining wheat-gold. His eyes are dark brown -- lively, dancing, recklessly laughing eyes that can be gentle and sympathetic one moment and blazing with anger the next. He has Dad's eyes, but Soda is one of a kind. He can get drunk in a drag race or dancing without ever getting near alcohol. In our neighborhood it's rare to find a kid who doesn't drink once in a while. But Soda never touches a drop--he doesn't need to. He gets drunk on just plain living. And he understands everybody.
Darrel Curtis
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Darry is six-feet-two, and broad-shouldered and muscular. He had dark-brown hair that kicks out in front and a slight cowlick in the back -- just like Dad's -- but Darry's eyes are his own. He's got eyes that are like two pieces of pale blue-green ice. They've got a determined set to them, like the rest of him. He looks older than twenty -- tough, cool, and smart. He would be real handsome if his eyes weren't so cold. He doesn't understand anything that is not plain hard fact. But he uses his head.
Dallas Winston
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If I had to pick the real character of the gang, it would be Dallas Winston - Dally. I used to like to draw his picture when he was in a dangerous mood, for then I could get his personality down in a few lines. He had an elfish face, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, small, sharp animal teeth, and ears like a lynx. His hair was almost white it was so blond, and he didn't like haircuts, or hair oil either, so it fell over his forehead in wisps and kicked out in the back in tufts an curled behind his ears and along the nape of his neck. His eyes were blue, blazing ice, cold with a hatred of the whole world. Dally had spent three years on the wild side of New York and had been arrested at the age of ten. He was tougher than the rest of us - tougher, colder, and meaner. The shade of difference that separates a greaser from a hood wasn’t present in Dally. He was as the boys in the downtown outfits, like Tim Shepard's gang.
Two-Bit Matthews
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Two-Bit Mathews was the oldest of the gang and the wisecracker of the bunch. He was about six feet tall, stocky in build, and very proud of his long rusty-colored side burns. He had gray eyes and a wide grin, and he could not stop making funny remarks to save his life. You could not shut up that guy; he always had to get his two-bits worth in. Hence his name. Even his teachers forgot his real name was Keith, and we hardly remembered he had one. Life was one big joke to Two-Bit. He was famous for shoplifting and his black handled switchblade (which he could not have acquired without his first talent). And he was always smarting off to the cops. He really could not help it. Everything he said was so irresistibly funny that he just had to let the police in on it to brighten up their dull lives. (That's the way he explained it to me.) He liked fights, blondes, and for some unfathomably reason, school. He was still a junior at 18 and a half and he never learned anything. He just went for kicks. I liked him real well as at other things. He reminded me of Will Rogers - maybe it was the grin.
Steve Randell
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Steve is seventeen, tall and lean, with thick greasy hair he kept combed in complicated swirls. He was cocky, smart, and Soda's best buddy since grade school. Steve's specialty was cars. He could lift a hubcap quicker and more quietly than anyone in the neighborhood, but he also knows cars upside-down and backward, and he could drive anything on wheels. He and Soda worked at the same gas station - Steve part time and Soda full time - and their station got more customers than any other in town, whether that was because Steve was so good with cars or because Soda attracted girls like draws flies, I couldn’t tell you. I liked Steve only because he was Soda's best friend. He didn't like me - he thought I was a tagalong and a kid; Soda always took me with them when they went places if they weren't taking girls, and that bugged Steve. It wasn't my fault; Soda always asked me, I didn't ask him Soda doesn't think I'm kid.