, not just how much but, how fast things could go from bad to worse.

Hinton had set the stage for this worse case scenario, the fight, when the greasers saw the Socs in the blue Mustang. At that point, Ponyboy realizes the Socs in the blue Mustang are the ones who had attacked Johnny previously, a fight is threatened but thwarted by Cherry, one of the girls Ponyboy and Two-Bit are with. The girls just happen to be the girlfriends of the Socs in the blue Mustang so their choice to go with the Socs instead of staying with the greasers postpones the inevitable fight — until 2:30 a.m., in the park. What happens next is far worse that anything Ponyboy could have imagined. Running away becomes more than running away from home. It's running away from a murder. 

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 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.

In Chapter 2, a flashback occurs when Ponyboy recounts the story of when Johnny got beat up by a gang of Socs to Cherry while they are standing in line waiting to get popcorn. Ponyboy says to Cherry that one night he and the some Greasers were walking back from the gas station when Steve picked up Johnny's jean jacket on the road. Steve noticed that the jacket had blood stains on the collar, and the boys began to hear moans coming from across a nearby lot. The gang ran towards the cries and Sodapop was the first to find Johnny laying face down in a pool of blood. When they turned Johnny over, Johnny's face was badly beaten and cut. Ponyboy mentions how he felt sick after seeing Johnny's bruised and bloodied face. Johnny then told the boys how a group of four Socs jumped him and said that one of the Socs was wearing a fistful of rings. Ponyboy then explains to Cherry that ever since Johnny's traumatic beating, he carries a six-inch switchblade with him at all times. Johnny vowed to never let anybody beat him up like that again.

In Chapter 2, Johnny gets severely beaten by a group of Socs to the point that he is nearly unrecognizable. When Ponyboy and the other Greasers discover Johnny lying motionless across a field, his face is covered with bruises and cuts. Johnny then explains to the Greasers how a group of Socs hopped out of a blue Mustang and jumped him. Ponyboy goes on to mention that Johnny always carries a switchblade with him wherever he goes after suffering that severe beating. Ponyboy foreshadows Johnny's unintentional murder of Bob Sheldon by saying,

He'd use it, too, if he ever got jumped again. They had scared him that much. He would kill the next person who jumped him. Nobody was ever going to beat him like that again. Not over his dead body.

Ponyboy again foreshadows Johnny's unintentional murder of Bob Sheldon at the end of Chapter 3 by saying,

Things gotta get better, I figured. They couldn't get worse. I was wrong.

In Chapter Four, Ponyboy and Johnny are jumped by a gang of Socs, who attempt to drown Ponyboy in the fountain located in the park. Johnny ends up saving Pony's life by stabbing and killing one of the Soc members. Unfortunately, Johnny is forced to flee the city and Pony travels with him to Windrixville.

In Chapter Seven, Ponyboy includes a flashback to explain Darry's personality. One time, Steve made the mistake of calling Darry "all brawn and no brains," and Darry broke his jaw. Steve learned his lesson to never call Darry that again, and Darry never forgave Steve for his comments.

In Chapter 1 when Pony is jumped by the Socs on his way home from the movies, they ask him if he wants his hair cut off.  He will later get his hair cut off because of a Soc (because he is there when Johnny kills Bob Sheldon).

In Chapter 2, much of the second half of the chapter is a flashback.  It is the part where Pony flashes back to what happened when Johnny was beaten so badly by Bob and the other Socs.

Then at the end of Chapter 2, the very last line could be called foreshadowing too.

Hinton foreshadows the fights between the greasers and the Socs and the trouble that Johnny and Pony will get into.

Foreshadowing is the author’s use of hints at future events earlier in the story.  One example of foreshadowing is when Pony describes the trouble that greasers get into with Socs.

Greasers can't walk alone too much or they'll get jumped, or someone will come by and scream "Greaser!" at them, which doesn't make you feel too hot, if you know what I mean. We get jumped by the Socs. (Ch. 1)

In fact, Pony and Johnny are going to have a lot of trouble with the Socs throughout the book.  The Socs jump Johnny, and beat him badly.  Pony is also targeted by a group of Socs, but the others in his gang are able to intervene before he is too badly injured.

When Johnny is jumped, it also foreshadows the incident in the park when Johnny and Ponyboy are targeted again.  This is the more serious incident, because in fact Bob is killed when Johnny is trying to defend Pony from him. 

We backed against the fountain and the Socs surrounded us. They smelled so heavily of whiskey and English Leather that I almost choked. I wished desperately that Darry and Soda would come along hunting for me. (Ch. 4)

Each time Johnny is attacked, it is serious.  The second time, he defends himself because he has to.  He and Pony head to the church on the run, and it is there that they defend the children from the fire.

Johnny is badly injured in the fire.  The greasers are very angry about the incident in the park, and they decide to get payback against the Socs.  But before the rumble, Pony has a conversation with one of the Socs, Randy, who tells him that he no longer wants to fight.  It foreshadows Pony getting out of the life.  He sees Randy as just a guy, and tells Two-Bit so.

I still had a headache, but I felt better. Socs were just guys after all. Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too. (Ch. 7)

If Pony can see that Socs are just people, the maybe some of the other greasers can too, and the fighting can stop.  At the very least, by the end of the book, Pony has turned a new leaf.  He has taken Johnny's advice to "stay gold," and put his efforts in education.  The Outsiders is proof of that.  It is his English paper.

Foreshadowing lets us know what's important, and also adds suspense to a story.  When an important event happens, the reader can nod and remember how it was led up to before.  Throughout the story, one event leads to another, and everything leads to Pony leaving "the life."

In the young adult novel The Outsiders byS. E. Hinton, fourteen-year-old Ponyboy, his brothers, and their friends are members of a gang called the Greasers. The Greasers and the more privileged “west-side rich kids,” who are called the Socials or Socs, fight often. Sometimes their fights get very violent.

The author foreshadows the deaths of two Greasers, Dally and Johnny. First, both boys are injured badly and wind up in the hospital, a hint of more violence in store for them later. Ponyboy was in the waiting room waiting to hear how Dally and Johnny were. He "had watched them bring Dally and Johnny in on stretchers."

The author also foreshadows their deaths by using terms related to death frequently in relation to them. For instance, Johnny gets beaten up and Ponyboy writes:

His face was cut up and bruised and swollen, and there was a wide gash from his temple to his cheekbone ... I thought he might be dead; surely nobody could be beaten like that and live.

Furthermore, Ponyboy says, “Living in those conditions ... was killing Johnny.” He also refers to Johnny killing someone. Ponyboy says about Johnny’s knife, “He'd use it, too, if he ever got jumped again ... He would kill the next person who jumped him. Nobody was ever going to beat him like that again. Not over his dead body.”

Relative to his fear of the Socs, Johnny says:

"I can't take much more." Johnny spoke my own feelings. "I'll kill myself or something."

"Don't," I said, sitting up in alarm. "You can't kill yourself, Johnny."

Two Socs confront Ponyboy and Johnny in the park. Johnny pulls his knife and kills one of the Socs. This is another element foreshadowing Johnny’s death in retaliation. The church where Ponyboy and Johnny hide is significant because Johnny ultimately achieves redemption there. When the church catches on fire, he helps to save a group of schoolchildren who have been trapped inside.

Terms related to death are frequently mentioned in connection with Dally too. Dally tells Johnny, “Blast it, Johnny, what do they matter? Shoot, my old man don't give a hang whether I'm in jail or dead in a car wreck.”

Dally also says, "Said he saw my picture in the paper and couldn't believe it didn't have 'Wanted Dead or Alive' under it." He also tells the girls, “you've got me scared to death."

Ponyboy indicates that Dally wanted to die. He says:

—I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.

Moreover, Dally’s background is characterized by lots of violence, even more than the other Greasers. Ponyboy says that “Dally had seen people killed on the streets of New York's West Side.”

Not surprisingly given his background, Dally also has a violent streak. Also, "Dally “was as wild as the boys in the downtown outfits, like Tim Shepard's gang. In New York, Dally blew off steam in gang fights.” Ponyboy also writes:

One time, in a dime store, a guy told him to move over at the candy counter. Dally had turned around and belted him so hard it knocked a tooth loose. A complete stranger, too.

Ponyboy says, “Dally—wild, cunning Dally—turning into a hoodlum because he'd die if he didn't.” When Ponyboy is waiting for Dally, he fears that Dally might be dead.

Given Dally's violent streak and seemingly desensitized view of death, his own possible death is referred to in a casual manner.

I don't have your exact text version, because there is no flashback on page 85 of my text.  I think you are referring to the flashback sequence in which Ponyboy explains why Johnny is the way that he is.  Right before the flashback sequence, Cherry says this about Johnny:

"Johnny... he's been hurt bad sometime, hasn't he?" It was more of a statement than a question. "Hurt and scared."

Ponyboy then begins to tell Cherry what happened four months earlier.  Ponyboy, Steve, and Soda were walking home from the DX station and noticed Johnny's blue-jeans jacket lying on the ground.  That was already a bad sign, because Pony tells the reader that it was the only jacket that Johnny had. Steve looked at the jacket closely and noticed that there was a stain on the color.  It was the color of rust.  There was more of that stain on the grass as well.  Uh oh.  

The three boys began looking around and "heard a low moan and saw the dark motionless hump on the other side of the lot . . ."  That sentence right there is quite gripping.  The reader assumes it is Johnny, but also isn't sure because Hinton doesn't describe the shape as human.  Just a motionless hump. It was in fact Johnny, and he had been beaten up so badly that Ponyboy almost threw up. 

The rest of the Greaser gang arrives at this point, and Johnny regains consciousness.  Between sobs and racking pain, Johnny eventually explains what had happened.  A blue Mustang with four Socs in it had pulled up beside Johnny and beat him to a pulp. One of them had rings on his fingers, which cut Johnny up.  Additionally they threatened him with all kinds of stuff (Hinton isn't specific here).  The result of the entire event is that Johnny has been a nervous and jumpy guy ever since.  He now carries a switchblade and claims that he will kill the next person who jumps him like that again.