William Marting
Mr. McDonald
English Composition 2
10 October 2014
Prison Changes People Prison is said to do something to people. It changes the way people think, act and who they are. “The second time I went to jail I was like, ‘Okay, this is not the move.’” A quote from The Notorious B.I.G. on how prison made him see who he really was and how a prison life should be avoided. Like him, Piper Kerman sees life a different way after prison. She goes through many changes throughout her novel Orange is the New Black. The person she before her time in prison is a completely different person that the one after. Piper Kerman, in the beginning of the novel, is a very superficial person. She is obsessed with brands that are considered high class. She wants the reader to think that she is well off and can afford those high society items. “My Doc Martens had been jettisoned in favor of beautiful handmade black suede heels.” There is no essential need for her to mention that she usually wears Doc Martens and that today she decided to wear ‘handmade’ heels instead. Nothing would be lost from the story if she just said she was wearing black heels. Towards the end of the book, it seems she cares less about what she has and more about the fact she does have it. She values everything she has in prison and doesn’t take it for granted whether it be her books or her pie. Before Piper met Larry, she had a different “type” of person that she was into. Piper was, or so she claimed to be, a lesbian. After sharing a kiss with Larry, she thought “What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t particularly want to date a man, and this man wasn’t even my type” (p.18). Larry is what first drew her out of her “lesbian adventure”. Prison was also a deciding factor on showing Piper she was straight. She saw how many inmates were “gay for the stay” (p.76) and she started being able to spot the differences between real women who were in love versus women who just missed the company of another person or were doing it just to fit in. She even makes fun of the people who are not serious and calls them “schoolgirl crushes” (p.77). All of these relationships she sees in prison help her to realize what she does have in Larry and how she really is not gay. Piper was a risk taker. She loved to do things that weren’t seen as conventional and were not always the smartest. This is seen very early when she deviated from the “clan of doctors and lawyers and teachers” (p. 4) that most of her family were and became a theater major instead. The next big risk she takes is to become part of an international drug trade and helping to smuggle drugs into the country. Not the best way to make a few extra bucks. Another big risk that she took happened in prison. She decided to stray out of bounds into A Dorm despite the risk. All of these risks caused her more trouble than anything good she gained from them. The major she chose helped introduce her to the people that got her involved in the drug trade. The drug trade got her a 15 month sentence in. She realized, through her time in prison, that her actions can and will have serious consequences. This taught her that taking serious risks are not worth it in the end. Prison also changed piper for the worse in some ways. In prison, she finds it common to classify people by what they look like and where they come from. She starts to stereotype everyone. Whether it was the “Spanish Mamis” (p. 152) or simply describing a character as black, white or any other race, she got accustomed to doing so. While this is used to become acclimated to prison life, it is not something that is good to do outside in the real world. Doing it on the outside can lend someone right back into prison and confirming the theory that prison does not do the job of reforming or changing inmates for the better. One of the most important things to learn in prison is how to adapt to the situation at hand and how to handle it
