Kingsolver reflects Dickens in other ways, too: Just as some people turn away from Dickens’s notoriously lengthy tales, the page count of “Demon Copperhead” - nearly 550 pages - has the potential to daunt readers. Even Demon compliments Dickens directly: “Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. Kingsolver’s deep admiration for Dickens shines throughout the novel she refers to him as her “genius friend in the Acknowledgements. Her novel is just as eye-opening about the opioid epidemic as Dickens’s stories were for Victorian readers. After visiting Charles Dickens’s home in England, Kingsolver was inspired by his “impassioned critique of institutional poverty” and decided to tackle modern American problems in a similar fashion. There, she saw the effects of the opioid crisis in Appalachia first-hand. Kingsolver, known for her acclaimed novel “The Poisonwood Bible,” was raised in rural Kentucky.
This novel draws upon both current problems in Appalachia and the way that Dickens brought the lives of the trodden-down into public consciousness.
This leads to Demon’s first use of opioids, and then the novel follows the arc of his life after this dreaded introduction. Demon briefly rises from his troubles to become a star on his local football team - but this respite is interrupted by a devastating injury. His resilience is repeatedly put on display, even as the mental scars of trauma start to weigh down upon him. The responsibility that he takes for matters outside of his control makes readers immediately sympathetic for Demon. The novel starts with the words, “First, I got myself born,” and from there Demon faces a variety of harrowing childhood experiences, including an opioid-addicted mother, an abusive stepfather, intense grief, child labor, and negligent guardianship. From the beginning, though, he takes responsibility for his entire life. Inspired by the sweeping narrative of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield,'' Kingsolver uses compelling characters and an underrepresented setting to create a heart-wrenching portrait of the American opioid crisis.ĭemon Copperhead - his first name a twist on “Damon,” his last name owed to the red hair he inherited from his father - has a lot of troubles. Kingsolver uses the perspective of a young boy to showcase the true parties at fault in rural America, including the institutional structures that ruin lives, corrupt children, and send communities into cycles of ruin. “They did this to you.” Other characters drill this assuration into the mind of Demon, the main character of Barbara Kingsolver’s newest novel, “Demon Copperhead.” The book, set in a poor county in southern Appalachia during the opioid epidemic, deals with the large question of who is to blame for a crisis.
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