Stopford-LENS+6

Mary Stopford Y.A. Lit LENS 6 April 17, 2012

In Paul Griffin’s novel //The Orange Houses//, readers get to see the lives of three different narrators living in an urban neighborhood. One of these narrators, Jimmi, is an army veteran who has been struggling to reinsert himself back into civilian life. I think that Griffin is using Jimmi as a means or commenting on how our society treats war veterans. In the novel, it seems like Jimmi is pretty much on his own. He talks about receiving his checks from the government and getting a job, but that is pretty much it. The only other thing he was provided with was, as Jimmi says, “all the happy drugs he could stand. Learning to cope with things through medication might have encouraged Jimmi to try other illegal drugs when his first prescribed drugs didn’t help. After going through the hardships of war, I would hope that Jimmi would be receiving more emotional support. Even his neighbors seem to look down on him. Mika’s mom calls him “crazy” and “crackhead” (22). When Tamika went missing, people believed Jimmi did it. The narrator says, “They were his neighbors, his friends” (129). However, these “friends” believed the war had affected him badly, so they turned on him at once. In this story, soldiers are portrayed as going off to war, only to be looked down upon when they suffer they post-traumatic syndrome.