Ponyboy was not a reliable first person narrator. Although the POV of the story was a new and interesting perspective contrary to the ones we’ve seen in the past, it isn’t exactly reliable. If the story was told from a third-person perspective, it would likely have painted Ponyboy and Johnny as the antagonists since they killed Bob. Since it was from his perspective, they were seen as the protagonists while Bob was seen as an antagonist, even though he didn’t do much wrong. It’s a biased perspective, towards the gang and himself, so it’s likely to be less reliable. If it was written from the perspective of one of the Socs, like Bob or Cherry, it’d likely be biased as well, towards the other side. They would have been more inclined to tell the story with a positive light shone on them. I think that Ponyboy was a good narrator in the way he told the story, but you couldn’t consider him reliable for these reasons.
