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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 next day, Demon, Maggot, Emmy, and Fast Forward pass through Christiansburg and Richmond. In Richmond, they stop to see Mouse and stay at her house. They all do lines of cocaine off of a glass table after one of the guys Mouse lives with offers it to them. Demon doesn’t get much sleep that night. He thinks the house is the kind of place where people routinely get knifed. The next day, Fast Forward tells Demon that they “screwed around too much” on the way here, and now they have to head home. They’re not going to make it to the beach.
On this trip, Demon fails to reach the ocean, which to him symbolizes beauty and liberation. The fact that Demon doesn’t make it underlines where he is in his life. While he may want the liberation and beauty offered by the ocean, he may not be ready for it in his day-to-day life, as he continues to lose the stability he had when he lived with the Winfields.
Themes
Demon thinks the drive home is miserable. Fast Forward is excited about the drugs he scored at Mouse’s house, but Demon starts going through withdrawal. When he gets back to Dori’s house, she gives him a hit of something to tide him over. The next morning, Angus calls and tells him he needs to get back to Coach’s house. She tells him he found out he hasn’t been going to school and is talking about implementing a curfew and lockdown. When Demon gets to Coach’s house, U-Haul confronts him. He says Coach has put him in charge of making sure Demon gets off drugs. When Demon asks why he should care about anything U-Haul says, U-Haul tells him he should care because he (U-Haul) knows things about Coach that no one else does. Namely, that Coach has been embezzling money. Demon says, “You are so full of it.”
After failing to reach the ocean )and the liberation and escape it symbolizes), Demon’s struggles catch up with him back home at the Winfield house. Notably, U-Haul says that Coach has appointed him to be in charge of getting Demon off drugs. Since Coach is living with his own addiction to alcohol, it may have been difficult for him to take on the role. The novel suggests, too, that Coach’s own struggles with addiction may have made him vulnerable to U-Haul’s schemes and accusations.
Themes
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