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Copperhead Snake
Opioid painkillers symbolize strategies that people use to exploit others, showing how self-interest and greed are often hidden beneath a mask of benevolence to enable people in more powerful positions to take advantage of others. Aunt June’s boyfriend, Kent, is a pharmaceutical rep in charge of marketing opioid painkillers. Kent claims that his company’s mission is to eliminate suffering in patients who are in pain—and that painkillers are the way to do that. Notably, Kent does not say his company’s mission is to make money. In reality, though, as June later points out, Kent’s company knows its product is addictive and pushes doctors to prescribe it without caring about where that addiction might lead. June describes Kent as a “hired killer for his company,” and the novel shows that June’s assessment is true, as both Demon’s mom and his girlfriend, Dori, die as a result of their addiction to opioid painkillers. The novel argues, then, that Kent’s company—a stand-in for pharmaceutical giants like Purdue Pharma—markets painkillers with a message of compassion while preying on people, exploiting them, and often indirectly killing them, all in order to make a profit.
But opioids are only the latest in a long string of corporate marketing that uses benevolence as a mask for corporate greed. Coal and tobacco companies did the same thing to the people of Appalachia before the pharmaceutical companies. And in the novel, corporations aren’t the only guilty parties. People like Mr. Crickson and the McCobbs exploit Demon and other foster children while claiming to be concerned with the wellbeing of those children to hide their true economic motivations. Even someone like Stoner hides his abuse of Demon behind a mask of good intentions, claiming that he is trying to teach Demon to be respectful and righteous. In this way, then, Demon Copperhead’s portrayal of opioids symbolically illustrates a broader phenomenon of people (and corporations) using polished, crafty rhetoric and claims of good intentions to conceal their greed and their nefarious aims.
Opioid Painkillers Quotes in Demon Copperhead
The Demon Copperhead quotes below all refer to the symbol of Opioid Painkillers. 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:
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Chapter 11
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She asked me about Creaky Farm, and I told her. The old man was brutal to Tommy, and Swap-Out should be in some other kind of situation […]. Had Crickson ever hit me, she asked. Answer: no. I myself had not been struck. And that was that. Miss Barks was sorry, but Tommy and Swap-Out weren’t on her. Usually all kids in a home are from one foster company, but Crickson was an emergency-type place, and Tommy and Swap-Out belonged to a different foster company that Miss Bark didn’t work with. So fostering was done by companies, and we, as Stoner would say, were Product. Rotating and merchandising foster boys at more than fifty customer accounts. Live and learn.
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Chapter 14
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If Philip Morris and them knew the devil had real teeth, they sat harder on that secret than you’d believe. Grow it with pride and smoke it with pride, they said, giving out bumper stickers to that effect. I recall big stacks of them at school, free for the taking […]. We drove around with “Proud Tobacco Farmer” stickers on our trucks till they peeled and faded along with our good health and dreams of greatness. If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.
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Chapter 36
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I was born to wish for more than I can have. No little fishing hole for Demon, he wants the whole ocean. And on from there, as regards man-overboard. I came late to getting my brain around to the problem of me, and still yet might not have. The telling of this tale is supposed to make it come clear. It’s a disease, a lot of people will tell you that now, be they crushed souls under repair at NA meetings or the doctors in buttoned-up sweaters. Fair enough. But where did it come from, this wanting disease? From how I was born, or the ones that made me, or the crowd I ran with later? Everybody warns about bad influences, but it’s these things already inside you that are going to take you down.
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Chapter 48
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If you’ve not known the dragon we’re chasing, words may not help. People talk of getting high, this blast you get, not so much what you feel as what you don’t: the sadness and dread in your gut, all the people that have judged you useless. The pain of an exploded leg. This tether that’s meant to attach you to something all your life, be it home or parents or safety, has been flailing around unfastened all this time, tearing at your brain’s roots, whipping around so hard it might take out an eye. All at once, that tether goes still on the floor and you’re at rest.
You start trying to get back there, and pretty soon, you’re just trying to get out of bed.
It becomes your job, staving off the dopesickness for another day. Then it becomes your God. No one ever wanted to join that church.
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Opioid Painkillers Symbol Timeline in Demon Copperhead
The timeline below shows where the symbol Opioid Painkillers appears in Demon Copperhead. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7
...finds Mom lying faceup in her clothes on her bed, still breathing, but surrounded by pill bottles . They’re not empty, though, so Demon thinks she had just been trying to get...
(full context)
Chapter 10
...are “special.” He digs a hat out from under his bed and shows Demon the pills inside. The boys pass the hat around, each taking a pill at random. Demon thinks...
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Chapter 41
...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...
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