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Maggot
Murrell Stone, nicknamed Stoner, is Mom’s boyfriend who is physically and verbally abusive to Mom and Demon. After Mom dies from an overdose, Demon becomes convinced that she had returned to drugs in part to cope with the pain that came along with her relationship with Stoner. The novel depicts stoner as a textbook example of toxic masculinity. He is quick to anger, unreflective, prone to violence, and discriminates against Maggot because he suspects Maggot is gay. There are moments during Demon’s relationship with Dori when the novel seems to intimate that Demon might be at risk of inheriting some of Stoner’s harmful behaviors, as when Demon breaks the TV when he is angry at Dori for always watching it. After Dori dies, though, instead of continuing down a path toward more and more toxic masculinity, Demon pursues sobriety and opens himself up to his emotions in a way that Stoner never would.
Stoner Quotes in Demon Copperhead
The Demon Copperhead quotes below are all either spoken by Stoner or refer to Stoner. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
Mom had walked down the road and Stoner was bent over kissing her like he was trying to suck something out of her guts with a straw. And her a willing party to the crime.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16
Quotes
Maybe life, or destiny, or Jesus if you really need to put somebody in charge of things had finally flung down one too many rocks in Mom’s road and she called it a day. That’s option one. Or two, maybe she didn’t aim to die but miscalculated to cap off her twenty-nine-year pileup of miscalculations, one of those of course being me. I could spend the rest of my life asking which it was, suicide or accident. No answer on that line.
Chapter 41
Quotes
Where does the road to ruin start? That’s the point of getting all this down, I’m told. To get a handle on some choice you made. Or was made for you. By the bullies that curdled your heart’s milk and honey, or the ones before that curdled theirs. Hell, let’s blame the coal guys, or whoever wrote the book of Lee County commandments. Thou shalt forsake all things you might love or study on, books, numbers, a boy’s life made livable in pictures he drew. Leave these ye redneck faithful, to chase the one star left shining on this place: manly bloodthirst. The smell of mauled sod and sweat and pent-up lust and popcorn. The Friday-night lights.
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Stoner Quotes in Demon Copperhead
The Demon Copperhead quotes below are all either spoken by Stoner or refer to Stoner. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
Mom had walked down the road and Stoner was bent over kissing her like he was trying to suck something out of her guts with a straw. And her a willing party to the crime.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16
Quotes
Maybe life, or destiny, or Jesus if you really need to put somebody in charge of things had finally flung down one too many rocks in Mom’s road and she called it a day. That’s option one. Or two, maybe she didn’t aim to die but miscalculated to cap off her twenty-nine-year pileup of miscalculations, one of those of course being me. I could spend the rest of my life asking which it was, suicide or accident. No answer on that line.
Chapter 41
Quotes
Where does the road to ruin start? That’s the point of getting all this down, I’m told. To get a handle on some choice you made. Or was made for you. By the bullies that curdled your heart’s milk and honey, or the ones before that curdled theirs. Hell, let’s blame the coal guys, or whoever wrote the book of Lee County commandments. Thou shalt forsake all things you might love or study on, books, numbers, a boy’s life made livable in pictures he drew. Leave these ye redneck faithful, to chase the one star left shining on this place: manly bloodthirst. The smell of mauled sod and sweat and pent-up lust and popcorn. The Friday-night lights.
