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
Vester dies that winter. Dori doesn’t seem like she’ll ever get over this death. She worries she might have given him too much fentanyl and that he died of an overdose. Demon tells her she’s not to blame for the ice storm that cut off the power and, as a result, Vester’s oxygen. Vester’s death also means that Dori and Demon no longer have a supply of drugs. Demon figured out a while ago that Dori had been selling Vester’s drugs to make money. After Vester’s death, Dori and Demon drive to a clinic in Pennington Gap to sell what’s left of Vester’s stash. The clinic is a pill mill—the doctor inside will write prescriptions for whomever asks—but it can take so long to see the doctor that people will buy from Dori as well. Dori tells Demon that the doctor inside is Dr. Watts.
This chapter shows the inner workings of the opioid market in Demon’s community. Essentially, Dori says, Dr. Watts operates as a drug dealer, similar to Fast Forward. The difference is that the drugs that Dr. Watts gets don’t come from an illegal source: they come from pharmaceutical companies that are knowingly pushing doctors to prescribe highly addictive drugs. In that sense, the pharmaceutical companies operate on at least two fronts. First, doctors overprescribe pills to people who need pain relief (as happened with Demon). Once those people become addicted, they turn to people like Dr. Watts, who will prescribe them more of the same pills. While Dr. Watts’s business model is presumably illegal, either way, the drug companies continue to profit whenever doctors prescribe their pills.
Themes
After Vester dies, Demon can’t bring himself to leave Dori at the end of each day, even though he knows U-Haul is keeping close tabs on him, and he’s supposed to sleep at Coach’s. Then Betsy comes. She says she’s going to stop her monthly payments to Coach because Demon has flunked out of school. When Betsy cuts off the money, Demon decides to move in with Dori. After all, she has her own house now and is living there alone. Coach says the money doesn’t matter and that Demon is more than welcome to keep living in his home, but Demon still decides to leave. Before he goes, Angus tells him that he should stop using drugs before it's too late, and he should take it step by step and not expect miracles. She also says that she likes Dori because she knows Dori makes him happy.
The novel portrays Demon and Dori’s love for each other as genuine, but it seems likely that neither is in the best place mentally and emotionally to move in together. Dori’s father has just died, and she’s living by herself in the house where he died. Demon is addicted to pills and doesn’t have a plan to stop. This chapter presents Demon at a pivotal crossroads; whatever decision he makes will dramatically alter his life. To Demon, though, it doesn’t seem like he has much of a decision. He feels like he’s overstayed his welcome at Coach’s house, even though Coach says the opposite. Demon’s perception of the situation points to how his past trauma and potential fear of abandonment have altered his ability to trust others, pushing him to make a decision that will most likely put him in harm’s way.
Themes
