Chapter 4 is an action-packed chapter of the The Outsiders. Johnny and Ponyboy are jumped at the park; Johnny kills a member of the rival Soc gang; and Johnny and Ponyboy go on the run to hide out in an abandoned church several miles away.

The setting at the beginning of the action foreshadows what will happen in several ways. First, Johnny and Pony are in a park. Johnny was in a park (a sports field) when he was jumped and beaten by a gang of Socs in chapter 1. The park in chapter 4 is described as "shadowy and dark." The word "dark," with its dual meaning of "night" and "evil," portends something bad about to happen.

As Pony and Johnny rest and Pony calms down from a fight with his brother, a blue Mustang begins circling the park. The Socs who beat up Johnny in chapter 1 were driving a blue Mustang at the time. The car is mentioned several times in previous chapters, each time indicating that Socs are following and threatening the Greasers.

As five Socs get out of the Mustang and come toward the boys, Pony says, "Johnny's hand went to his back pocket and I remembered his switchblade." After being jumped, Johnny had begun carrying a knife. This sentence foreshadows that he will use it.

Johnny is also described as deeply frightened, with "wild looking" eyes. Like cornered animals, desperate people will do almost anything to survive. Wild eyes foreshadow that something wild—unusual, perhaps primal—will develop. There is some other foreshadowing later in the chapter, as the boys find their friend Dallas and he hints at where the pair are going. See if you can identify it.

Foreshadowing hints at something to come later in the story. When you read a sentence or paragraph that foreshadows a future event, it often makes you pause and anticipate what will happen. Sometimes, though, prose serves as foreshadowing only in retrospect. Not even the most precocious readers can know, upon their initial encounter, that certain words foreshadow what will happen later—typically because what happens later is so unpredictable. "The Lottery," a famous short story by Shirley Jackson, is an excellent example of this latter kind of foreshadowing.

Chapter 4 of the book, in which Ponyboy and Johnny get in a fight with the Socs, is set in a deserted park. Though the fountain in the park is still bubbling, the pool has been drained, making the park seem like it's lost some of its life. The park is described as "shadowy and dark," foreshadowing the dark days that will soon follow for Ponyboy and Johnny. The tall elms surrounding the park are eery, and no one is around, highlighting the isolation that Ponboy and Johnny feel. The park is also chilly, and Ponboy describes himself as feeling close to a "popsicle." Johnny winds up killing Bob, and a dark pool of blood escapes from Bob's lifeless body, a reflection of the empty pool in the park. Bob dies grasping his switchblade, which has turned dark with blood, similar to the darkness of the park. Soon after this incident, Johnny and Ponyboy take a train to a remote church, where they hide out, and their isolation, which they first feel in the park, is only intensified.

The setting in the early chapters of The Outsiders foreshadow the events of chapter 4 in many ways. In chapter 4, Johnny kills Bob, a Soc, who along with four other Socs, attempts to jump Ponyboy and Johnny while they are at the park. Earlier, we see foreshadowing that this event will occur when we look at the setting at the beginning of chapter 2.

At the start of chapter 2, the reader learns that the Greasers hang out in tough areas when Ponyboy describes the drive-in that the Greasers frequent known as "The Dingo". Ponyboy goes on to say "The Dingo is a pretty rough hangout; there's always a fight going on there and once a girl got shot." (Hinton p19). He later goes on to say "We knew about everybody there." (Hinton p20), showing the greasers familiarity with the violent atmosphere. Almost immediately after entering this scene a fight breaks out which leads to both fighters using switchblades, again showing that the risk of violence and death is always present in the greasers environment. The violent atmosphere at the theatre foreshadows the incident at the park, where Johnny is forced to use his switchblade to stab Bob in order to save Ponyboy, and defend himself from being jumped by Bob and the other Socs.

Later in chapter 2, following the walk home from the drive-in, and the run in with the group of Socs in the blue mustang, Ponyboy has a dream about how life would be better in the country, while he and Johnny lay in the lot. The dream about this setting foreshadows Johnny and Ponyboy going to hide out on Jay Mountain later in chapter 4 after the stabbing occurs. 

Both of these settings, the rough and violent atmosphere of The Dingo drive-in, and, ironically, the peace and calm Ponyboy dreams of in the country, foreshadow what is going to happen, and where Johnny and Ponyboy are going to end up, at the conclusion of chapter 4. 

Hope this helps!

The setting of chapter 4 is the park. It should be a place where Ponyboy and Johnny get to be kids, but the irony is that they are beyond childhood despite their years. The Robert Frost poem so admired by Johnny ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ explains that the bloom of life is a brief but beautiful thing, which passes swiftly but should be appreciated. Despite the tragic circumstances, the park is one of the ‘golden’ moments for Johnny. He has saved his friend’s life and his own. It is Johnny who takes charge and decides that they will go to Dallas Winston to help them. Johnny starts to fight back from this point. He is doomed, but will die a hero.

The setting of the park illustrates also how the feud between the Greasers and the Soc’s is seen as a game. The boys enjoy preparing for rumbles: it is the entertainment for both sets of teenagers. It takes the deaths of Bob, Johnny and Dallas for the remaining characters to realise that their game is deadly.