Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreamland, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics
The Drug Business
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic
Community as a Remedy to Addiction
Summary
Analysis
Alan Levine, a longtime heroin addict, lost his legs to frostbite when he passed out during an Illinois snowstorm. He eventually makes his way west to Portland, Oregon, where he continues to use the drug. In 1993, he learns there are new heroin dealers in town, and they deliver their product to addicts. This business model is revolutionary to Levine, because having no legs makes it more difficult to navigate city streets.
The Xalisco Boys built their business on a reputation for convenience, which was effective with Levine, whose disability made a drug delivery service particularly alluring.
Themes
Wayne Baldassare, a cop on the Portland Police Drugs and Vice Division, loves his work, but these new heroin dealers give him trouble. In the old days, heroin was sold out of houses, which made drug busts easier. But these new, young Mexican dealers deal only small amounts of drugs out of their cars. Because they carried such small amounts of drugs, they’d be deported—not prosecuted—when they were caught. These new dealers use “just-in-time supplying, like any global corporation,” to avoid prosecution.
Baldassare’s observation that the Xalisco Boys use “just-in-time supplying, like any global corporation” aligns the business practices of their illegal operation with those of legitimate businesses.
Themes
Back at Alan Levine’s motel room in Portland, there is a knock on the door: a young Mexican kid arrives with black tar heroin. Levine continues to buy from the Mexican men, who are fast and reliable. One night, a driver tries to scam Levine. Levine objects, and the two get in the boy’s car. They drive to his boss, who Levine will later determine is Enrique Tejeda-Cienfuegos. At the time, he knew this man only as El Gato. El Gato is from Acquiles Serdán, a village south of Xalisco. Levine explains his issue to El Gato, who apologizes and gives Levine free heroin. For Levine, dealing with the Xalisco Boys is worlds away from the underground drug world of the 1960s: “They were marketers,” he states.
Just like legitimate businesses, such as fast-food restaurants or retail shops, the Xalisco Boys operate according to a “customer is always right” philosophy. Because they want Levine to remain a returning customer, they go out of their way to make sure his needs are satisfied and his concerns are heard. One might also compare this “customer is always right” philosophy to the mindset that emerged in the medical industry during the pain revolution: doctors believed their patients’ (customers) complaints of pain to a fault, prescribing painkillers indiscriminately to keep patients satisfied and free of pain.
Themes
