Previous
Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beautiful Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Addiction, Ruin, and Redemption
Responsibility and Blame
Parenthood and Control
Support vs. Enabling
The Disease Model, Stigma, and Treatment
Summary
Analysis
The arrest is a result of Nic’s failure to appear in court after being cited for marijuana possession. David bails him out, assuring himself that this is the only time he will bail Nic out and hoping that the arrest will teach him a lesson. Afterward, Nic is moody, but he gets a job as a barista and dotes on Jasper and Daisy. As they play together, David is baffled at how Nic is acting as if nothing is wrong.
As conditions grow worse and worse for Nic, David starts to distinguish between supporting and enabling him. While he bails Nic out of jail here, he states later in the book that he would not bail a drug addict out of jail unless the person immediately went into rehab. Thus, it is important to aid people in getting help but not to enable them.
Themes
That fall, Nic decides to attend Berkeley. Jasper, Daisy, Karen, and David all drive with Nic to drop him off. A few days later, Nic seems engaged by his courses, but he complains about his classes in subsequent phone calls. Gradually, he stops returning David’s calls. David suggests that Nic meet with the school counselors or his therapist. A week later, Nic’s roommates call David because they are worried that Nic hasn’t shown up for a few days. David is distraught.
Now that Nic is no longer under David’s direct supervision, David’s desire for control and his distress at not knowing what is happening to his son escalate severely. He has yet to fully accept that Nic, as an adult, is free to make his own choices. David can only control how he himself responds to the situation—but at the moment, his lack of control over Nic only makes him sick with worry.
Themes
Two days later, Nic calls, admitting that college just isn’t working. David suspects drugs, but Nic says that he’s simply been feeling depressed and that he wasn’t ready for college. This makes sense to David, as there is evidence that children use drugs to self-medicate for mental health disorders. Many symptoms of those disorders appear identical to the symptoms of drug abuse. David’s research on teenagers and drug abuse illustrates that teenagers’ brains are particularly malleable, and that drug use can have deep, problematic effects on brain chemistry.
David continues his quest to educate reader on drug abuse and how addiction can be particularly difficult to overcome as a teenager because the disease can have a major effect on brain chemistry. This, in turn, can make addicts more likely to use drugs. This serves as another support for the disease model of addiction, which holds that addiction has a deep biological basis.
Themes
When Nic says he may be depressed, David is eager to believe that drugs are the symptom rather than the cause of Nic’s problems. Nic moves home and decides to apply to another college, Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, because he wants a smaller college experience. In the meantime, he will go to therapy, honor curfews, help around the house, and work. Nic agrees, and a few months later he is accepted to Hampshire College.
At this point, David still somewhat subscribes to the stigma surrounding addiction: he is more willing to believe that Nic is simply depressed, and is using drugs to treat that depression, than to believe that he is addicted to drugs. Still, despite Nic’s missteps, David also believes that Nic can set himself back on the right path and return to college next fall.
Themes
Get the entire Beautiful Boy LitChart as a printable PDF.
One night, David goes to bed early and wakes with a start in the middle of the night. Sensing that something is wrong, he knocks on Nic’s door and discovers that he is not there. David relays that he is becoming used to constantly feeling angry and worried. By three in the morning, Nic is still not home. By seven, David starts calling Nic’s friends and his therapist, but no one has seen him. Every time the phone rings, David gets anxious with grisly thoughts. He starts calling jails and hospitals. When Jasper and Daisy wake, they sense that something is wrong, and when David tells them that he doesn’t know where Nic is, they start to cry.
David’s feelings in this period when Nic is home are the beginnings of a cycle that he will experience many times: the cautious hope that Nic can get better, the worry upon realizing that he might have faltered, and the despair in being unable to control him. This cycle repeats over and over throughout the remainder of the book, emphasizing the difficulty of living with addiction and the fact that it is a lifelong disease.
Themes
Four days later, Nic finally calls, saying that he’s in trouble. David drives to meet Nic, who is in an alleyway behind a bookstore. Nic is “bruised, sallow, skin and bone.” In the car, David insists that Nic must go to rehab, and Nic agrees. He spends the next three days feverish and rambling, curled up in bed. The morning of the appointment at the rehab center, however, Nic refuses to go, insisting that he doesn’t need rehab. He says that he learned how dangerous meth is and will never use it again. David is horrified that Nic has used meth, as David had his own experience with the drug.
Over the course of the book, Nic will frequently insist that he doesn’t need rehab in order to get well because he can do it alone. In this way, Nic is a barrier to his own recovery as he denies the support he desperately needs. Additionally, this is another turning point in David’s understanding of Nic’s addiction. Nic has escalated quickly from smoking pot to using meth, and David is desperate to stop the decline that he understands meth can bring.
Themes
