Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead is a narrative about a youngster with no assets other than his dead father’s fine looks and copper-coloured hair, a sarcastic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. He was born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer. Demon braves the contemporary horrors of foster care, child labour, abandoned schools, athletic achievement, addiction, tragic loves, and shattering losses as told in his own unrelenting voice. He struggles with his own invisibility throughout it all in a culture where even superheroes have turned their backs on rural people in favour of urban areas.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
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From his own experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and the harm it caused to children in his culture many generations before, Charles Dickens based David Copperfield on his observations. In ours, those issues have yet to be resolved. Readers of this book are not required to be familiar with Dickens, yet he served as its inspiration. Barbara Kingsolver uses Charles Dickens’ rage, compassion, and most importantly, his belief in the transformational power of a good story to adapt a Victorian epic novel to the modern American South. A new generation of lost lads, as well as all those born into beautiful, cursed locations they can’t conceive of leaving behind, are represented by Demon Copperhead.
It’s a terrific book, Demon Copperhead. It is written from the man’s point of view, and what a story it is. From being born while still in the embryonic sac to surviving life on his own two feet and with inner grit. Being a Virginian, learning about locations in the state’s remotest regions was eye-opening. It’s a happy recreation of his childhood spent with his best buddy Maggot and under the watchful eye of Mrs Peggot. He’s free to roam around and explore with his pal. Along with teaching them how to shoot, Mr Peggot takes them fishing. When Demon’s mother marries Stoner, a man who wants his mother but not him, everything comes to an end.
The situation worsens when his mother is unable to withstand the strain of Stoner and Demon’s struggle for control. The demon was abused by his stepfather Stoner, so she initially overdoses and the county DSS places him in foster care. This short-term placement is at a farm where the foster parent uses the children as slave labour and prevents them from attending school in order to plant their tobacco crop. When his mother unexpectedly passes away from an overdose of “Oxcy,” a drug Demon had never heard of, they were all prepared to return to their home. This book weaves the backdrop of current issues throughout. A three-dimensional character, the demon.
A masterwork, “Demon Copperhead” cleverly recasts “David Copperfield” amidst the Appalachians’ rampant poverty and drug use. It displays astounding creative feats by Kingsolver, and it must have required a huge amount of background reading.
