Literary devices are used regularly in writing to increase the effectiveness of a description or explanation. Examples include favorites such as simile, metaphor, personification and various others. In "The Outsiders," foreshadowing, flashback, and pathos are used to add emphasis to the build-up to Johnny's mugging and the effect that the attack has on Johnny, which is very important as it explains Johnny's state of mind later when he kills Bob, a Soc while defending Ponyboy and then inference is used when Ponyboy begins to describe the actual attack.
In chapter 1 , before he fully describes Johnny's mugging, Ponyboy refers to it several times as he considers how Johnny has changed since the mugging. He says, "Johnny was scared of his own shadow after that." Ponyboy describes the "nervous, suspicious look in his eyes" even though Johnny was used to being beaten by his own...
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father. Inchapter 2, when Two-Bit gives Johnny a fright, the effects are severe as Ponyboy describes Johnny's reaction to Two-Bit's actions: "His breath was coming in smothered gasps." The reader pities Johnny's home situation, and for Johnny to suffer a beating at the hands of the Socs as well intensifies the reader's feelings towards Johnny (empathy, pathos) which again is important in understanding his reaction to events which unfold later.
Inference is used effectively as Ponyboy describes the actual mugging.The reader knows immediately that Johnny, "the dark motionless hump on the other side of the lot," has been beaten up and "the gang sensed what had happened" as Johnny tries to explain that there "was a whole bunch of them." Without actually saying so, it is obviously the Socs, the rival gang in the neighborhood, that has hurt Johnny. For Johnny to carry a "switchblade" after that event in order to apparently protect himself, is significant and foreshadows what will follow.
As already mentioned, the main literary device used is that of flashback, when the narrator leaves the present moment to relate something that happened in the past. We can also say that Ponyboy, when narrating the story of Johnny's beating, uses a careful build-up technique, revealing what happened in stages. For instance, the first clue that something bad happened to Johnny is when Ponyboy finds his jacket which is described as having a stain 'the colour of rust' on it. The stain of course is blood, but Ponyboy chooses to refer to it obliquely. The badly-beaten Johnny first appears as a 'dark motionless hump' rather than as a person; this is an example of a de-humanizing image. In this way Ponyboy builds up slowly to the terrible revelation of the savage beating Johnny received at the hands of the Socs. The actual beating is never shown at all: we only see the grim results of it in the form of Johnny's battered body and bloodstained jacket. It is obviously a very painful memory for Ponyboy, which is no doubt why he relates it in a somewhat roundabout manner to the sympathetically-listening Cherry.
As already mentioned in another answer, the story of this incident also uses the technique of foreshadowing, which is to say it hints at an event later in the book. This is when Johnny declares that 'he'd kill the next person who jumped him'. He ends up doing just that.
In Chapter 2 of The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton uses the literary device of imagery to describe Johnny's mugging. The use of imagery creates for the reader a series of mental images that all convey the seriousness of Johnny's injuries when he was mugged by a group of Socs.
Ponyboy, as narrator of the novel, explains to Cherry Valance the circumstances around Johnny's mugging in the form of a flashback. He uses visual imagery like "a stain the color of rust" on Johnny's jean jacket and "the dark motionless hump" that was Johnny to describe the extent of Johnny's injuries. As well, Ponyboy uses organic imagery to communicate his own feeling of nausea that came from his first glimpse of Johnny's face upon discovering him in the playing field: "Soda turned him over gently, and I nearly got sick. Someone had beaten him badly."
All of these images combine to create a frightening mental picture of a young man in pain. Both Cherry and the reader are better able to imagine what happened to Johnny thanks to the author's use of vivid visual and organic imagery.
The literary device used to describe Johnny’s mugging is idiom.
When Ponyboy is walking home, he is thinking about how his friend Johnny got jumped when he was sixteen. Johnny is a greaser like Ponyboy. He was jumped by a group called the Socs, or the socialites—the rich kids.
I had never been jumped, but I had seen Johnny after four Socs got hold of him, and it wasn't pretty. Johnny was scared of his own shadow after that. (ch 1, p. 4)
An idiom is a figure of speech that uses a metaphor or simile, but is so commonly used that it has entered into regular speech. Since it is a common expression, people usually know what it means. In this case, being afraid of one’s shadow means that someone is particularly nervous or jumpy. Johnny is jumpy due to the fact that he was jumped.
Johnny’s jumpiness foreshadows the fight he will have later with the Socs when he kills one of them and has to go on the run.
Hinton uses the device of flashback, which is when the narrator leaves the present time to tell about something that happened in the story's past. During the description itself, Hinton uses imagery to describe the state the boys found Johnny in and the way the boys felt when they found him.