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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Demon Copperhead, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
In the novel, Demon often describes himself as one of the “no-toucher” kinds of people. He takes the term from Mr. Ghali’s description of growing up in India as a Dalit, once known as an “untouchable,” a member of the lowest caste in India. In India, the caste system divides Hindu people into a hierarchy of five groups, or castes, with privileges reserved for those in the highest caste, while people in the lowest caste face social ostracization. While growing up in India, people of other castes refused to touch Mr. Ghali, and he is amazed to find that his caste status does not follow him to the United States. The novel contends, though, that a similar hierarchy operates in the U.S. In the U.S., the novel shows, society discriminates against people based on socioeconomic status. In particular, Demon Copperhead shows how after Demon’s mom dies and he goes into foster care, he feels socially ostracized in a way that reminds him of Mr. Ghali’s description of India’s caste system. When one of Demon’s foster families refuses to buy him new clothes, for instance, people at school move away from him and pretend to smell the air when he walks by.
The novel compares the social ostracization that Demon experiences throughout his life to the Hindu caste system to show how the stereotypes mainstream American culture attaches to people of a lower economic status, or who come from certain geographic regions, like Appalachia, perpetuate discrimination and limit people’s opportunities for upward social and economic mobility. In popular culture, people from Appalachia are stereotyped as being ignorant and lazy, with outsiders using insults like “redneck” or “hillbilly” to dehumanize and belittle them. The novel argues that these stereotypes preserve and perpetuate existing social and economic hierarchies and disregard the real problems that Appalachian communities face as a result of poverty, addiction, and other social ills. In using negative stereotypes to belittle and dehumanize Appalachian people, mainstream culture attempts to render Appalachian people “untouchable,” or inherently defective, and claim that the social ills that destroy Appalachian communities are the result of Appalachia’s inherent inferiority rather than the consequence of discriminatory and exploitative social and economic systems.
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Class, Social Hierarchy, and Stereotypes ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Class, Social Hierarchy, and Stereotypes appears in each chapter of Demon Copperhead. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Class, Social Hierarchy, and Stereotypes Quotes in Demon Copperhead
Below you will find the important quotes in Demon Copperhead related to the theme of Class, Social Hierarchy, and Stereotypes.
Chapter 1
Quotes
If a mother is lying in her own piss and pill bottles while they’re slapping the kid she’s shunted out, telling him to look alive: likely the bastard is doomed. Kid born to the junkie is a junkie […]. Anybody will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.
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Chapter 2
Quotes
A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing. If you get past that and grown, it’s easiest to forget about the misery and pretend you knew all along what you were doing. Assuming you’ve ended up someplace you’re proud to be. And if not, easier to forget the whole thing, period. So this is going to be option three, not proud, not forgetting. Not easy.
Chapter 9
Quotes
Other people made up hillbilly to use on us, for the purpose of being assholes. But they gave us a superpower on accident […]. Saying that word back at people proves they can’t ever be us, or get us, and we are untouchable by their shit.
The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.
Chapter 10
Quotes
A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushued nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was the labor and materials we were given to work with. An older boy that never knew safety himself, trying to make us feel safe. We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.
Chapter 20
Quotes
Miss Barks […] stuck with a different theory. I needed to be more pushy with them. Did she give up on her dreams? No, she worked hard for what she wanted. Did I expect anybody to look out for Damon if he wouldn’t look out for himself? Life is what you make it! Here’s where Miss Barks didn’t grow up: foster care. She had no clue how people can be living right on the edge of what’s doable. If you push too hard, you can barrel yourself over a damn cliff.
Chapter 25
Quotes
He said his parents, sisters, and all their dump friends were so-called no-toucher people. Meaning if they touched food or anything at all, it was like, doomed. Regular people would have none of it. Same for bodies, no shaking hands. If he let his shadow touch a high-class person, they’d call the cops to come beat the hell out of him. He said a name for this kind of people that sounded like “dolly”[…]. He said he never would get used to how nice Americans are to each other […]. But if we had a word for that kind of person in America, it would get used.
Chapter 41
Quotes
She said it was hydrocodone and something. Not oxy then, I said, and she said it was really no better than that. I was struggling for words and possibly catching the asshole bug from Coach because I asked her whatever happened to Kent’s “pain is a vital sign” and all that.
She hissed at me: “Kent Holt is a fucking hired killer for his company.”
Chapter 49
Quotes
I tried to explain the whole human-being aspect of everybody needing to dump on somebody. Stepdad smacks mom, mom yells at the kid, kid finds the dog and kicks it. (Not that we had one. I wrecked some havoc on my Transformers though.) We’re the dog of America. Every make of person now has their proper nouns, except for some reason, us. Hicks, rednecks, not capitalized.
Chapter 59
Quotes
“It’s not natural for boys to lose their minds,” she said. “It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them.”
I asked her like what. She got up and walked around the room, upset. No decent schooling, she said. No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents. No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before realizing the real assholes are a thousand miles from here […].
She sat down on the bed again. “The question you have to answer now is, What are you willing to do for yourself? And I won’t lie, it’s going to be harder than anything you’ve done before.”
