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
In the family history project for Mr. Armstrong, Demon learns that almost everyone in his family has some connection to the coal industry. Mr. Armstrong also tells the class about the Battle of Blair Mountain, where the army was called in to break a strike of coal workers. Demon understands the battle as the “biggest war in America, other than the civil one,” Mr. Armstrong says the coal workers wore red bandannas around their necks to show they were on the same side and that people calling the people of Appalachia “rednecks, that goes back to the red bandannas.”
Notably, Mr. Armstrong’s description of the origins of the word “redneck” is only partly true. The word was used before the 1921 coal strikes and seems to have been used as a derogatory way to refer to white people of lower economic classes. Even so, the history Mr. Armstrong describes also hints at ways to counter the effects of exploitation at the hands of powerful corporations and institutions. The novel suggests that the answers may lie in a history of individuals uniting to achieve collective power against those corporations and institutions.
Themes
But all of that is in the past, Demon thinks. No one has parents working in the mines now that coal companies traded humans for machines and laid off workers. After Mr. Armstrong points out that there’s no work in the area because the coal companies ensured that other industries wouldn’t encroach on their business, everything starts to click for Demon. The unemployed dads, moms with SNAP coupons, and army recruiters looking for hopeless kids—Demon sees how it can all be traced back to how coal companies devastated Lee County.
With Demon’s realization about how the coal companies have impacted Appalachia, he begins to see that the economic impoverishment of the region isn’t accidental or the result of choices of individual people but instead comes from years of exploitation targeted at the people of the region. Now, people in Appalachia continue to feel the impacts of that greed through no fault of their own.
Themes
