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Chapter 19
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
Miss Barks finds Demon a new home with the McCobb family. They have a boy, Brayley, who is in first grade, and a girl, Haillie, who is in second grade. They also have two baby twins who Demon can’t tell apart. The McCobbs never seem to have enough money to make it through the month, and Demon sleeps on an air mattress in a “dog room” at the back of the house, which also houses the washer and dryer and has a rotted floor. They never feed him enough, and even though the McCobbs get money from DSS to foster Demon, Mr. McCobb tells Demon he’ll have to get a job to pay his own way. He explains that Mrs. McCobb will take Demon with her to go to pawn shops, making Demon go in with the things she’s trying to sell because the pawn shop owners already know her. Eventually, Demon befriends Haillie, who sneaks him snacks.
The novel shows again that the foster care system is as ripe for exploitation as the mining or pharmaceutical industries. The novel suggests that while DSS in theory is supposed to provide for the wellbeing of children in its care, in practice the agency shuffles children from one harmful home to another without caring about how it impacts those children. At the same time, the individuals who foster those children, while they may claim that they are doing good for kids, are motivated by economic incentives.
Themes
