Directions: Read the passage below. Then answer questions about errors in the passage.

• My name is Myuki. 1) Today is Saturday March 4. 2) I going shopping with my daughter Misuzu. She is twelve years old. 3) We are going buying clothes. Misuzu wants 4) new boots black and a new winter coat. 5) I need new 6) pair the gloves. We are also going 7) for buy a birthday present for Misuzu’s friend. 8) Tommorrow is her birthday. She is having a party.

Part 2/3

To understand Johnny’s uncharacteristic reaction, the reader needs to start collecting textual evidence from the very beginning of the excerpt. Consider what the narrator says directly in the first paragraph:

• We were used to seeing Johnny banged up— his father clobbered him around a lot, and although it made us madder than heck, we couldn’t do anything about it. But those beatings had been nothing like this. Johnny’s face was cut up and bruised and swollen, and there was a wide gash from his temple to his cheekbone. He would carry that scar all his life.

From this passage, the reader can collect explicit textual evidence contrasting the beatings by Johnny’s father with the beating by the Socs. The Socs cut his face, leaving it ”bruised and swollen” and with “a wide gash from his temple to his cheekbone.” According to the narrator, who may be aware of the literal and figurative significance of that scar, Johnny “would carry that scar all his life.”

Paragraph 6 provides more textual evidence about the beatings. Read Johnny’s description of how the Socs attacked him:

• “There was a whole bunch of them,” Johnny went on, swallowing, ignoring Soda’s command. “A blue Mustang full ...I got so scared ....” He tried to swear, but suddenly started crying, fighting to control himself, then sobbing all the more because he couldn’t. I had seen Johnny take a whipping with a two-by-four from his old man and never let out a whimper. That made it worse to see him break now.”

This explicit evidence includes Johnny’s own words. It also includes the narrator’s comment that Johnny cried when he told the story about the Socs, even though he had been able to restrain his emotions when his father had hit him “with a two-by-four.” In fact, the narrator comments that it was hard for him to see Johnny “break now” when he had managed to stand up to his father’s beatings. From this textual evidence, the reader can draw the inference that the beatings by his father were not as frightening to Johnny as was the beating by the Socs.

Part 3/3

When read closely, paragraph 7 validates these inferences. The narrator pieces together the details of the attack from what Johnny has told him and from what he himself can see:

• Finally, between sobs, Johnny managed to gasp out his story. He had been hunting our football to practice a few kicks when a blue Mustang had pulled up beside the lot. There were four Socs in it. They had caught him and one of them had a lot of rings on his hand — that’s what had cut Johnny up so badly. It wasn’t just that they had beaten him half to death—he could take that. They had scared him. They had threatened him with everything under the sun.

This evidence allows the reader to refine the inferences drawn from the earlier paragraphs. Both Johnny and the narrator say that Johnny is more frightened by the fact that the “four Socs ....had caught him” than by the horrible beating itself. Johnny’s statement, “I got so scared,” in paragraph 6, is interpreted and developed by the narrator in paragraph 7: “They had caught him ....It wasn’t just that they had beaten him half to death—he could take that. They had scared him.”

Read this section (paragraph 7) from Chapter 2 of The Outsiders to collect textual evidence to support an inference. Then answer the follow-up questions.

"Johnny was high-strung anyway, a nervous wreck from getting belted every time he turned around and from hearing his parents fight all the time. Living in those conditions might have turned someone else rebellious and bitter; it was killing Johnny. He had never been a coward. He was a good man in a rumble. He stuck up for the gang and kept his mouth shut good around cops. But after the night of the beating, Johnny was jumpier than ever. I didn’t think he’d ever get over it." (Hinton)