Psychological Trauma and Institutional Neglect in Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25130/jfa.18.66.1.16Keywords:
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead, psychological trauma, institutional neglectAbstract
This paper examines Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead as a contemporary trauma novel that links psychological injury to institutional neglect. The study argues that Demon’s trauma is not the result of one isolated catastrophe but the cumulative effect of poverty, parental loss, foster-care instability, exploitative labor, medicalized pain, opioid exposure, and the failures of systems that claim to protect vulnerable children. Unlike readings that treat the novel primarily as a Dickensian adaptation or an opioid-crisis narrative, this article foregrounds the connection between damaged interiority and institutional structures. Drawing on literary trauma theory, recent scholarship on the opioid novel, and current research on foster care and placement instability, the paper shows how Demon’s first-person narration converts social abandonment into testimony. The analysis also integrates selected short textual quotations from the novel to ground its claims in close reading.
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