Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beautiful Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Addiction, Ruin, and Redemption
Responsibility and Blame
Parenthood and Control
Support vs. Enabling
The Disease Model, Stigma, and Treatment
Summary
Analysis
Nic calls again, explaining that he knows that David found out the truth about what happened. He says he’s sorry for lying and that he didn’t want to worry David. David sits in the living room when he spies a pile of newspapers that he doesn’t recognize. On top is a flyer from Nic’s favorite record store. The papers aren’t Karen’s, and immediately they jump to the conclusion that Nic broke in. But they soon realize that the newspapers belonged to a friend who visited the previous weekend.
The fact that David and Karen immediately jump to the conclusion that Nic broke in due to some extra newspapers illustrates the damage that he has done in their lives. Not only has he broken into their homes enough times that they now expect him to, but he has also made them paranoid and anxious at even the slightest abnormal thing in their lives.
Themes
David looks at his desk and puts away a recent photograph of Nic when he was in recovery. Then, David hears a song Jasper wrote as he edits it in Garage Band in another room—it is haunting and beautiful. David tells Jasper that there are places they can go for kids with siblings or parents who have addictions. Jasper agrees to try.
David acknowledges how he and Karen are not the only ones who have been deeply traumatized by Nic’s behavior. While they have been seeing therapists and specialists for years now, David reaches out to Jasper to make sure that he can also get the support he needs.
Themes
The next day, David thinks about Nic. He is momentarily stunned by the thought that Nic could die. He realizes that he would miss having Nic in his life, but then he has a further realization: he misses it now. He has not had Nic whenever Nic is on drugs. He knows that he will always love Nic, but that Nic on drugs is only a ghost of his sober self.
David’s thoughts here are yet another revelation. So much of the book has centered on how a parent deals with a child in crisis. Yet David understands that when Nic is on drugs, he does not have his son. This framing allows David to maintain the necessary distance from Nic’s drug use.
Themes
David returns to statistics of rates for rehab of meth addicts. He hopes the most meaningful statistic is this one: that more than half of the people who enter rehab are sober 10 years out, even if they’ve had relapses. Nic leaves another message for David, saying that he and Z. went too far and now plan to get sober. David doesn’t believe it. All he can do is hope that Nic has some kind of “near miss”—something dramatic enough to make him return to treatment, but not enough to kill him.
The cycle of Nic’s addiction has become so repetitive for David that he actually hopes for something worse to happen to Nic, in order to snap him out of it. This shows how difficult Nic’s addiction is for all of them: the only way for things to get better is to hope for Nic to have a near-death experience.
Themes
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