Ponyboy Curtis

In the novel, Ponyboy has light-brown hair and greenish-gray eyes. He has a good build for his size and is a fast runner. At the beginning of the novel, Ponyboy's hair is long and dark, but is cut short and bleached blond while he and Johnny are on the run. He is described as good-looking and resemblant of Sodapop by several characters, though he disagrees. In the film, Ponyboy's appearance is faithful to his novel appearance, with the minor exception of his hair, which is darker than it is described as being in the book. Ponyboy is a greaser who lives with his two older brothers, Sodapop and Darry on the lower-class east side of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His parents were killed in an automobile accident just eight months before The Outsiders takes place. Ponyboy, like Sodapop, is under Darry's legal custody and must stay out of trouble in order to remain with him. He gets good grades in school and is a superb athlete but pals around with the local hoods, his gang of greasers consisting of him, his brothers Soda and Darry, Steve Randle, Johnny Cade, Dally Winston, and Two-Bit Matthews. At the beginning of the story, he hates Socs because they hate him, but his perspective on them changes by the conclusion of the story.

Darry characterizes Ponyboy as lacking common sense. Ponyboy agrees with this assessment. He is smart at school, but sometimes he just doesn't think properly. These occasions get Ponyboy into trouble that he could avoid. This aspect of his character evolves throughout the story into maturity. He is fairly quiet (though not as much as Johnny), and only opens up to a few people, those being the other greasers and Cherry Valance. Cherry Valance describes Ponyboy as sweet and dreamy, much to Ponyboy's delight. He is more compassionate than some of the other greasers, pitying and even empathizing with the Socs several times in the novel and questioning the purpose of fighting between the two social classes. He is also willing to help others, as shown when he runs into the burning church to save the schoolchildren, or when he picks up broken glass bottle pieces off the ground so that a car doesn't get a flat tire. He is known to frequently sleep.