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Chapter 53
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
When Demon gets home that night, he finds Dori crying on the couch in bloody pajamas. He doesn’t think she understands what’s happening. After Demon says he thinks she must have lost the baby, Dori cries even harder. Dori wants to “shoot a morphine patch,” but Demon won’t let her. She yells at him and says he doesn’t love her. Demon doesn’t know how much she’s already had and is afraid that more might kill her. At least five different times, he’s come home after a night at Tommy’s to find her on the couch with her eyes rolled back in her head after overdosing. Demon thinks that his only purpose now is to make sure Dori doesn’t die, and he doesn’t know how to do that.
Dori has a miscarriage and wants to shoot morphine to alleviate her pain. Demon won’t let her, and Dori’s response that he doesn’t love her is telling. In their relationship, drug use is framed as an act of love. Dori offers Demon drugs to help ease the pain of withdrawal, and Demon makes sacrifices to ensure that Dori has the drugs she needs. The novel complicates stereotypes around addiction that might frame it as a deliberately selfish or self-serving pursuit. Instead, the novel argues that addiction can be a misguided and ultimately destructive attempt to care for the people one is closest to.
Themes
