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 late October, the football team is six points ahead of Powell Valley at home when Demon gets hit and injures his leg. The injury is so bad that Coach takes him out of the game. The next morning, Dr. Watts comes to see him. Demon overhears the doctor and Coach talking about what the issue might be. The doctor says Demon will have to go to the hospital for an X-ray and MRI. In the meantime, Dr. Watts writes Demon a prescription for a painkiller called Lortab.
Demon doesn’t seek out painkillers. Instead, a doctor, who presumably has medical knowledge and authority, prescribes them to Demon. At this point, Coach and Demon are just trusting the word of an established medical professional. That trust points again to the novel’s arguments about how pharmaceutical companies preyed upon unsuspecting people to secure their own profits.
Themes
Demon spends the next week in and out of consciousness while he takes Lortab. One day, Angus goes to his room while he’s recovering. She can tell he’s agitated and asks what he’s afraid of. Demon tells her that if he can’t play football, he’ll lose his value to Coach, so he won’t really be welcome in the house after that. Angus says her father wouldn’t do something like that. Demon doesn’t spell out what he’s thinking to her: that without football, he’ll be back where he started. He would be “the loser Demon” again: the person who is still there, just beneath the surface. And he would never get to be with Dori.
This chapter shows again just how profoundly Demon’s past trauma has impacted him. Because of his past experiences with exploitative and uncaring foster parents, Demon can’t fathom that his relationship with Coach isn’t transactional. Demon assumes that playing football is his ticket to stay at Coach’s and that Coach will kick him out if he can’t play. The novel hints, then, that as long as Demon has that kind of overwhelming fear hanging over him, he won’t be able to find true, lasting stability and happiness.
Themes
June hears from Emmy about Demon’s injury. When he wakes up one afternoon, she is at the foot of his bed, staring at the bottle of pills. She asks him how long he’s been taking Lortab and who prescribed it. She then examines Demon’s leg and tells Demon and Coach that she’s not happy with his radiology report because the X-ray wasn’t taken from the best angle. After she leaves, Demon can hear her and Coach talking in the hall. She says she used to see a couple of narcotics patients a year, but now she sees a couple every day. Soon after, Demon goes to see the bone doctor, who tells him that he’ll probably need surgery. He also refills Demon’s painkiller prescription. When Demon picks it up from Walgreens, the paper stapled to the bag reads OxyContin.
When Demon is at risk, June, a member of his surrogate family and community, comes to try and help him, showing how much Demon’s community is willing to show up for him. June also warns about the possibility of addiction, and the novel underlines that warning when Demon receives a prescription for OxyContin, the same drug that killed his mother. By referencing that same drug, the novel suggests that a person’s family history can affect their chances of struggling with addiction later in life: it’s not just a matter of personal choice.
Themes
