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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Demon Copperhead, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Exploitation
Class, Social Hierarchy, and Stereotypes
Pain and Addiction
Toxic Masculinity
Community and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
Since they live together on Crickson’s farm, Demon starts spending a lot of time with Tommy and rides with him every day on the bus. Tommy likes to draw like Demon, often filling entire notebook pages with skeletons when he’s had a bad day. He also tells Demon his life story. Tommy’s parents both passed away when he was too young to remember, so he’s been in some kind of care for most of his life. He tells Demon that foster care gets worse the older you get. At school, Demon gets to see Maggot. Demon describes Maggot as the only thing he has left to live for. At Crickson’s house, Demon keeps helping with the farming while Tommy and Swap-Out struggle with the work. Fast Forward also throws the party he promised.
Through Tommy’s story, the novel intends to show again that the struggles that Demon faces are not entirely novel. Instead, the novel contends, many people in the Appalachian region face similar hardships. The novel does this not just to show the difficulties of various individuals but to hint at the ways that injustices engrained in the institutions that have shaped the socioeconomic landscape of Appalachia impact the lives of individual people there.
Themes
At the party, which is held in Fast Forward’s room, Fast Forward, Tommy, Swap-Out, and Demon eat candy and cookies and smoke cigarettes. The three younger boys listen to Fast Forward’s stories about girls he’s had sex with. Before he knows it, Demon feels high. Fast Forward tells him that the cookies he ate are “special.” He digs a hat out from under his bed and shows Demon the pills inside. The boys pass the hat around, each taking a pill at random. Demon thinks other people might have opinions about a ten-year-old boy getting high on pills. But really, Demon thinks, it’s an older boy who has never known safety trying to make the other boys feel safe. They have to look out for one another because the adults have left them to fend for themselves.
With Fast Forward, Tommy, and Swap-Out, Demon tries pills for the first time. He thinks people might judge him, or the Appalachian region, because he begins taking pills when he is only 10 years old, but he is careful to note that Fast Forward’s impetus for offering drugs doesn’t come from a desire to make him addicted or even to get him high: instead, Fast Forward shares the drugs to give vulnerable kids a sense of the comfort and escape that they desperately need.
Themes
