*contains spoilers*Johnny compares Dally to the gallant Southern gentlemen in Gone With the Wind because, well, Dallas is gallant. Johnny proves this by telling a story of how Two-Bit broke out the windows in a school. The cops thought it was Dally and arrested him. Dally didn't throw a fit, or defend himself, or even bat an eye. He took the sentence as it was given to him. How gallant is that?! Dally took a punishment he didn't deserve to protect Two-Bit, even though he knew he didn't deserve the sentence. Dally had been in jail off and on since he was ten. He had been hardened at a young age. Two-Bit may have been in jail before, he may have not, but either way, Dally was protecting him from becoming hardened, the way Dally himself was.Johnny's comparing this to the Southern gentlemen in Gone With the Wind because the Southern gentlemen "rode into sure death because they were gallant". Think about Dally's death. In a similar sense, he "rode" into it, knowing full well that he would be killed. Besides the fact that he wanted to go out with a bang, he was going to make sure he would die gallant, too. The one thing he lived for was taken from him, and he didn't have anything else to love. Not even his life. If you don't think about it the way it is, Dally seems stupid for bluffing with the cops and getting himself killed. But really, it was a heroic gesture. He was gonna make sure he was gonna be with Johnny, even if that meant he didn't get to live.**Source: Chapter 5 of The Outsiders, and my heart.
Johnny compares Dally to the gallant southern gentlemen in Gone With the Wind because Pony makes it clear that Johnny worships the ground Dally walks on.He in a non-homo way LOVES Dally. Dally is his idol. So when the book describes the gallant (brave, heroic) men, Johnny uses Dallas as an example, because that is how he sees him.
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Dally was so real he scared me.
Ponyboy speaks these words in Chapter 5, during his stay with Johnny in the abandoned church in Windrixville. Pony’s realization stems from a comment Johnny makes after reading a passage from Gone with the Wind, in which he says that Dally reminds him of one of the gallant Southern gentlemen from the Civil War. The fact that Dally is too “real” for Ponyboy reveals something about his narrative perspective. He says earlier that the other greasers—Soda, Darry, and Two-Bit—remind him more of the heroes in his books than Dally does. Ponyboy feels more comfortable with Soda, Darry, and Two-Bit because as a narrator, and later a writer, he is more comfortable with fictional heroes than with real people like Dally who have lost their innocence.
Johnny, on the other hand, though quieter and more timid than Ponyboy, finds it in himself to admire Dally and to look past his intimidating exterior. Dally does not scare him but rather fascinates him, and he holds a romanticized vision of Dally as an honorable Southern gentleman. By comparing Dally to a character in a book, Johnny becomes able to understand him. In a sense, Ponyboy’s and Johnny’s comments about Dally reveal that Ponyboy is even more vulnerable than Johnny.
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