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
Karen has a small cabin in the diverse and friendly town of Inverness, about an hour north of their home. Nic and David enjoy the water, and Nic quickly picks up surfing. He and David love spending time together when the swell is up. David and Karen decide to build a house and painting studio in the Inverness hillside, moving in before Nic begins sixth grade at a new school.
The decision to move to Inverness is another that David eventually questions, wondering whether it contributed to Nic’s drug use (though he eventually concludes that Nic likely could have found drugs anywhere). It serves as another illustration of how difficult parenting is—it’s simply impossible to foresee every potential danger to children.
Themes
After Nic’s first day at school, he relays that he likes it. He says that the teachers seem nice and that he made a friend who remembered him from when he visited the school. Each day, Nic gains more confidence and friends; he starts talking to a girl named Skye on the phone at night. Karen and David attend the school’s art shows and plays, in which Nic often participates.
David initially presents the many positive attributes of Nic’s new school, and how Nic succeeds quickly there. Having a rosy perception of the school will likely make it more difficult for David to determine future incidents that are flukes versus things he needs to be concerned about.
Themes
Every Wednesday, Nic, Karen, and David go to Karen’s parents’ house for dinner. Nancy and Don live within driving distance of all three of their children, and they are a very close family. Don is a retired doctor who now evaluates the effectiveness of new medicines, and Nancy works every day in the garden. At these dinners, Nancy often reports news of children’s deaths in the area, mostly as cautionary tales.
Nancy’s reporting on the terrible incidents happening to children around the area illustrates the terrifying nature of parenthood. It supports the idea that it is impossible to control children’s lives all of the time—sometimes, difficult and terrible things happen regardless of how protective parents are.
Themes
At one of these dinners in October 1993—when Nic is 11 and Karen is seven months pregnant—Nancy tells the story of a 12-year-old girl named Polly Klaas who was abducted from her bedroom in a town a half hour from Inverness. The police arrest a man soon after, and he leads the police to her body. Nic’s friends become obsessed with the murder. David worries about the effect that this has on them, but there is no way to tune out these horrific stories.
Polly Klaas’s death provides a specific example of one of the terrible incidents that Nancy speaks of—again reinforcing the idea that sometimes bad things happen to children, even with loving parents and in safe neighborhoods. While addiction is not necessarily the same situation, there is still an aspect of randomness to addiction that is difficult for David to understand.
Themes
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Jasper is born in early December. Nic seems to like playing with him, but David knows that it is complicated for him, wondering where Nic fits into the new family. Still, not much changes afterward. David and Nic surf and play guitars together. On New Year’s Eve of 1993, they go to a Nirvana concert for an unforgettable evening. But three months later, Nic comes home distressed, announcing that Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head.
David again illustrates some of the difficulties in controlling what kind of news and situations that children come across. He and Nic love and bond over Nirvana, but the reality of Kurt Cobain’s suicide hits Nic hard. David also references many other artists, musicians, and writers to whom Nic looks up, many of whom were addicts or were depressed, which creates a dangerous set of role models.
Themes
After summer, Nic begins seventh grade, and David worries about the new perils of being a teenager that Nic is experiencing. In 1940, top disciplinary items for public school teachers included talking out of turn, chewing gum, running in the halls, and dress code violations. Now, they are drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, and robbery. When Nic enters seventh grade, he finds a new advantage of a baby in the family: the girls in his grade love coming over to play with Jasper. Nic also starts spending free time with a group of boys with buzzed hair and skateboards. They talk about music and girls.
David considers how much more dangerous middle and high school have become generally, providing support for the idea that no one might be responsible for Nic’s addiction—it is simply more probable now than it has been in the past for children to be affected by life-altering issues. While Nic does choose to hang out with boys who are not a good influence on him, their presence springs from a gradual, widespread worsening of problems in schools.
Themes
One day, in early May, David picks Nic up after school and smells smoke on his clothes. Nic says that he was hanging out with kids who were smoking and admits that he had a few puffs. David lectures him, and Nic promises not to do it again. The next Friday, Nic and a friend are playing football at their house before a sleepover. David is packing a bag for Nic and looks for a sweater in Nic’s backpack. Instead, he finds a small bag of marijuana.
This passage marks Nic’s first incidents with drugs, and it begins the slow crisis of control for David. Given Nic’s reputation as a gifted kid who mostly stays out of trouble, the realization that Nic is smoking cigarettes and marijuana is likely a shock to David’s innocent perception of his son.
Themes
