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Situational Irony
Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis:
In Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver adopts a style that combines the personal and the political. The novel tells the stories of several individuals living in and around Lee County, Virginia, but it also places their stories in the broader political and historical context of labor and poverty in Appalachia. While working on Creaky Farm, for example, Demon reflects upon the financial difficulties faced by tobacco farmers such as Mr. Crickson:
Philip Morris and those guys got their product, got the kids hooked, made their fortunes, and we all lived happily ever after, for a hundred years or something. Until people caught on to the downside of smoking and sued the hell out of somebody. And the government said, Well, never mind on that, and phased out the price supports. I had only a kid’s idea of anything at Creaky Farm, but losing those market guarantees was all men talked about. Getting their farms foreclosed, moving in with their kids or maiden aunts, going on disability because their piece of American pie went rotten.
Here, Demon uses Creaky Farm as one example of a broader historical pattern in which farmers in Appalachia rely on the profits of tobacco farming but risk foreclosure due to shifts in government policy. The novel suggests that, due to increased awareness of the negative health effects of smoking tobacco, the government removed the subsidies that made this mode of farming profitable. Though Mr. Crickson is an unsympathetic character who exploits the labor of the foster children whom he takes in, the novel acknowledges the constant anxiety of those farmers in the region who are only one poor harvest away from losing the farms that have supported their families for generations. Reflecting the style of the novel more broadly, this passage highlights the ways in which the lives of individuals are impacted by historical patterns beyond their control.
Related Themes:
