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 beginning 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 for good.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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. Dally is at a friends house, recovering from a fight over some slashed tires. He gives them $50 and a gun, and tells them to take the 3:15 train to Windrixville where he knows 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. Dally expresses great concern for Jonny when he is visited in the hospital. He borrows his friends knife and uses it to convince the nurse to let him out of the hospital so that he can participate in a big gang fight called a "rumble". After the big rumble, he returns to the hospital 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. After Jonny dies Dally breaks down and runs out of the hospital, seemingly out of his mind.

Dally turns suicidal and then robs a store,knowing the police will chase him. When he reaches the street corner where the rest of his gang has gathered, he aims his unloaded gun at the police, who shoot and kill him by suicide by police.

Spoilers end here.

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 or hair cuts 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. In the novel, Dallas is described as "far from handsome" by Ponyboy, although Matt Dillon's portrayal of Dallas contradicts this.