Subliminal Passages

Two ways the author tells us about the main character are through direct information and subliminal hints. What I mean by that is that the author tells us direct information about the character (example: “Bobita has green hair”, meaning Bobita’s hair is green). The author can also write a line that is subliminal, and causes us to infer and understand said line (example: “Bobita spilled milk, and cried as usual”, meaning Bobita has a tendency to get emotional even if it is not necessary. An example of direct information from the story is “I have light brown, almost-red hair…” An example of a subliminal hint is “I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman...” This phrase tells us, that like most people, Ponyboy has some insecurities.

Three subcategories
of the two categories listed above are to describe the main character using physical description, the character’s thoughts, and the character’s behavior. By using physical description to describe the characters, we often get to see how the world sees the characters. An example of this method from the book would be “...and [I have] green-grey eyes”. Then by using the character’s thoughts, we have insight on how the character views themselves. An example of this is “I wish [my eyes] were more grey, I hate most guys with green eyes.” Finally by looking at the character’s actions we can see how the character reacts to his or her environment. “I started at a dead run for the church, a man caught my arm. He said, “I’ll get them, you kids stay out! I jerked loose and ran on.” This shows us the bravery of Ponyboy without using any opinion in the text. Those are the methods the author used to tell us about the characters.