Room at the Top

Without surprise spark notes focuses primarily on idea of the gap between the rich and the poor in The Outsiders as well as other obvious themes such as loyalty amongst friends and guy-girl relationships. However the information I found most intriguing was the motif of eye shape and eye color in the story. I never realized how reoccurring the descriptions came about of each character’s eyes, and after reading all the examples spark notes gives the fact is obvious that Hinton is really placing importance on the appearance of her character’s eyes. The short paragraph states, “Characters’ eyes represent key facets of their personalities. For example, Darry and Dally—the two boys with whom Ponyboy feels the least comfortable—have icy blue eyes. Dally’s eyes, in particular, are narrow. The narrator considers these two characters to be hard, even heartless, and the narrowness and cool hues of their eyes reflect their invulnerability. Hinton repeatedly defines Johnny Cade, on the other hand, by his wide, brown eyes. In correspondence with his eye shape and color, Johnny is generally nervous, gentle, and vulnerable to attack.”
After reading these descriptions we can really begin to understand how eyes can tell us so much about a character. By simply adding colors and shapes Hinton gives us an excellent window into the description of each character, we get a great sense of each boy’s personality and can even make assumptions about each of their past just from their eyes, the best being Johnny. His eyes reveal that he is nervous and extremely jumpy, both characteristics that occur from abuse or neglect. While other physical descriptions are needed as well, I think that the understanding of each boy’s eyes tells us more than any other information that Hinton could include.