Foil

Character Role Analysis

Jamie and P

When you're an alienated weirdo, you have two choices: use your weirdness to save yourself, or let it destroy you. P did the former, and when the story starts, Jamie is doing the latter. However, thanks to P's partner, Jorge, and a stack of P's plays, Jamie ends up with a glimmer of hope.

The Major kicked both P and Jamie out of his house. P's major advantage was that he was older and already living on his own, but the Major still banished him to the Holiday Inn when he came out during a Christmas visit at age twenty-three. Jamie, however, didn't even get to hit puberty before being sent off to Buckner.

Music and words saved them both, and P is the person Jamie will, with any luck, grow up to be like. When P dies, Jamie moves in with Jorge and their cat Carlos, hoping to start a new, less-criminal life in Memphis. He even moves into the room in which P died, hoping he might get haunted by a Clash-loving ghost.