What characters in the film version and the novel version are static or developing? What evidence from the novel supports this?

In both the film and the novel, most of the characters in The Outsiders conform to types. For example, Two-Bit is the wise guy, eating cake for breakfast and watching cartoons in the film. Likewise, Ponyboy is the dreamer, Darry is the leader, Dally is the tough one, etc. Characters like Two-Bit, Soda, Steve, and arguably even Dally, are static.

There are some dynamic characters in the book as well, though. Ponyboy is definitely one of them, as he sees himself as an outsider even among the other greasers, with his good grades and love of stories. As the novel goes on, though, he finds himself connecting with other characters, like Cherry, who also loves sunsets, and Mr. Syme, who also loves literature. When Ponyboy writes what is supposed to be the novel The Outsiders, he is connecting with all the readers of that novel as well. Thus his development takes him from isolated to connected. Through his connection with Cherry, he has also begun to question the simplistic stereotypes that he subscribes to at the beginning of the book: that greasers have all the problems and Socs' lives are perfect. When he says that Randy is "just a guy," he shows that he can see Socs as regular people with problems.

Of course, both Darry and Ponyboy also change in their relationship to one another. At the beginning of the story, their relationship is rough, with Darry taking on the role of father to his brothers at a very young age and Pony just getting into his tumultuous teenage years. Pony says,

"Darry love me? [...] Darry doesn't love anyone or anything, except maybe Soda. I didn't hardly think of him as being human" (Chapter 1).

After the brothers reunite at the hospital, though, Pony realizes why Darry is always so tough on him:

"That was [Darry's] silent fear then—of losing another person he loved. I remembered how close he and Dad had been, and I wondered how I could ever have thought him hard and unfeeling. I listened to his heart pounding through his T-shirt and I knew everything was going to be okay now. I had taken the long way around, but I was finally home. To stay" (Chapter 6).

Both brothers change in how they relate to each other as, throughout the novel, they come to understand and empathize more with the other's point of view.

Johnny is another dynamic character. At the beginning of the novel, Pony describes him as "a little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers" (Chapter 1). Still, for a character defined by his fear, he has many moments of courage throughout the story: he tells off Dally for talking dirty to the Soc girls at the drive-in, he stabs Bob to save Pony's life, and he even runs into a burning building to save schoolchildren. One could make the argument that Johnny develops courage over the course of the story.

Still, Johnny would not call himself a hero, exactly. In some of his quotes, he seems to think that he isn't fully worthy, because he has lost the innocence that Pony and the schoolchildren he saved still have. When he tells Pony to "stay gold" in Chapter 9, he is telling him to hold on to his childlike innocence for as long as he can and not let the world corrupt him. Johnny also says that he doesn't mind dying because he has saved innocent lives, adding, "Some of [the kids'] parents came by to thank me and I know it was worth it" (Chapter 9). It seems that Johnny thinks that he has lost his own innocence or worth already, from his parents' rejection or from killing Bob or just from the violence that has been in his life thus far. Still, it seems that his act of heroism and his sacrifice of his own life to save innocents have redeemed him somewhat in his own eyes.

Johnny, Ponyboy, and even Darry go through changes as characters that advance the story and the themes of loyalty to family and friends, chivalrous courage, and using empathy to bridge divisions.