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
“The Man” arrives in California in 1939. By the time he drops out of high school and gets his diploma at a continuation school, he is trafficking weed—and later, pills—throughout the San Fernando Valley. When the Man is 19, he starts to use heroin. He sees himself as outside “the Establishment.” The only thing holding the Man back is an unreliable heroin supply. In the 1970s, he meets Rafael Caro Quintero, the nephew of a famous Mexican drug kingpin, Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseca, who founded the Sinaloa cartel. Later in his life, the Man gets involved with the Xalisco Boys, distributing black tar heroin across the U.S. He will come to regard Xalisco as his home. If David Tejeda “ignites the first stage” of the Xalisco heroin expansion,” the Man is responsible of the second stage in 1998.
It’s ironic that the Man considers his drug abuse and drug trafficking as outside of “the Establishment” when the underground drug trade operates on many of the same principles as the square world of legitimate, established businesses. The Sinaloa drug cartel was founded in Sinaloa, Mexico, in the 1980s. They are known for their violence, which stands in contrast to the Xalisco Boys, who built a reputation on not engaging in violence and not carrying guns.
Themes
In his interview with Quinones, the Man regards himself as “a hero” to the young, impoverished boys and men of Xalisco, whom he’d recruit to sell heroin in the U.S. The Man recalls how the heroin market started out as primarily older addicts, but eventually grew into a market of young, well-off white addicts. The Man followed OxyContin, and the new markets it promised.
The Man sees himself as a hero because he gave back to his community by supplying its youth with jobs and an opportunity for social mobility. The Man’s move to follow OxyContin to exploit a new market of users parallels the pharmaceutical industry’s move to follow the pain revolution’s destigmatization of opiates and exploit a new market of doctors willing to prescribe opiates.
Themes
