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Chapter 24
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
Demon gets a ride from a long-haul trucker and tells him he’s on his way to Tennessee, then he falls asleep. Five hours later, he wakes up, and he’s in Nashville, which is even farther from Murder Valley than Lee County. Demon gets dropped off at a gas station and then makes a sign with UNICOI, the name of the county where Murder Valley is, written on it. A chatty woman picks him up. She says she likes unicorns, too, and that she’s on her way to see her boyfriend in Knoxville. She drops him off at an exit named Love Creek.
Demon’s journey to Murder Valley is anything but easy. To get there, he has to rely on strangers and ends up taking wrong turns. That journey, then, provides a glimpse into Demon’s psyche by showing the lengths he's willing to go to find a family he isn’t sure exists. While Demon tries to maintain a positive attitude during the trip, at this point in his life he has no home, almost no food, and no money, and so he’s more desperate than he might let on.
Themes
In Love Creek, Demon eats his last food, a Slim Jim he stole from Mr. Ghali. Demon remembers Mr. Ghali telling him that in India, he and his family were “so-called no-toucher” people, people whom others in India refused to touch. Or, if Mr. Ghali touched food, they would refuse to eat that, too. Mr. Ghali said the name for those people was, as Demon remembers, something that sounded like “dolly.” Mr. Ghali was amazed that in the U.S., he can touch food and serve it to anyone, and they’ll eat it without thinking twice about it. Demon, though, thinks that while there may not be a word for “no-toucher” people in the U.S., there are certainly people who are never touched. If there were a word like that in the U.S., Demon thinks, “it would get used.
Mr. Ghali explained to Demon that in India, he was considered a Dalit person, a member of a caste of people who were once called “untouchables.” Mr. Ghali is referring to the caste system in India, which determines a person’s socioeconomic standing. Dalit people are considered the lowest members of the caste system. Historically, people of other castes refused to touch them or objects they had touched. Mr. Ghali was pleasantly surprised that his caste status did not follow him to the U.S. Demon believes, though, that there is a different kind of caste system in the U.S., which also includes a bottom rung for people whom others refuse to touch (figuratively) . He seems to reference the social ostracization he experienced at school, and he suggests that the poor treatment people receive in the U.S. is often the result of shared prejudices and stereotypes within a community that function similarly to the caste system in India that Mr. Ghali described.
Themes
It takes three more rides for Demon to get to Unicoi County. When he gets to Murder Valley, Demon asks everyone he comes across if they know Betsy Woodall. No one does, until Demon finds a group of men outside a feed store. When he asks about Betsy, one says she was last seen riding a broom. They keep making jokes about Betsy being a witch until Demon lashes out at them. Then, they give him directions to find her in a yellow, two-story house. He doesn’t notice the woman pulling weeds out front right away. When she sees Demon, she angrily tells him to leave. But when Demon tells her he’s her grandson, her attitude changes “Oh, lord,” she replies.
Before Demon meets his grandmother, Betsy, he gets a sense of her reputation within Murder Valley. That reputation seems to be based on sexist and misogynistic tropes derived from toxic masculinity, as the men refer to Betsy as a witch. The novel underlines, then, how stereotypes and prejudices determine one’s socioeconomic standing within different communities.
Themes
