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Chapter 36
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
The football team makes it to the state semifinals. At the game, the cheerleaders make up “Trailer Trash” cheers about them, and spectators throw manure on the field. On a Saturday the following February, Emmy tells Demon and Maggot that June and Kent are breaking up. Emmy explains that June told Kent that she would no longer prescribe his painkillers, and if he wanted to know why, he could go to her clinic and see people with hepatitis from needles, and whose family farms went bankrupt in six months.
Kent is a pharmaceutical drug representative. His goal is for doctors to prescribe opioid painkillers, and throughout the novel, he serves as a stand-in for the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier, Kent explained that his company aims to help suffering patients, but June now sees the addiction that prescription painkillers have left in their wake. The novel argues, then, that the pharmaceutical companies’ benevolent rhetoric was nothing but callow marketing, disguising the corporate greed of an industry that never cared about the human repercussions of its business strategies.
Themes
After Angus gets her license, she and Demon take a road trip to Murder Valley. When they get there, Betsy asks them about their plans for the future. Angus, who’s a junior in high school, says she wants to go to college to study sociology or psychology. Demon feels hurt, knowing that no matter what happens, Angus plans to leave Jonesville (and him) behind after she graduates. Demon tells Betsy that he might try to go to college on a football scholarship.
In this chapter, more cracks appear in the superficial stability of Demon’s present life. While he and Angus are close now, Demon takes her decision to leave for college personally. To him, that decision isn’t just a sign that she’ll have opportunities in the future: instead, it’s another instance of someone abandoning him. The novel shows, then, that Demon’s unhealed past trauma may inhibit his ability to form healthy, lasting relationships because his fear of abandonment prevents him from being a supportive and caring friend.
Themes
