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
Quinones sits with the Man in his living room in the Central Valley of California. Quinones reflects on the many hours they’ve spoken since the Man’s release from prison (he was incarcerated in Operation Tar Pit), and how much the Man knows about both the Xalisco system and America’s methadone clinics.
The Man’s equal knowledge of the Xalisco system and America’s methadone clinics shows how intertwined legitimate drug businesses are with illegitimate drug businesses.
Themes
Quinones brings the reader up to speed on the Xalisco Boys. For many years, their small deals allowed them to avoid run-ins with bigger gangs; however, in 2010, the Zetas and Sinaloas feuded, spreading violence to Xalisco. Many died. Eventually, the Zetas won, and Xalisco cell leaders paid Zetas for protection. Through all this, though, the Xalisco heroin trade continued in the U.S. They remained a system of small businesses, bringing convenience and impeccable service to their customers. To Quinones, the Xalisco Boys are “the Internet of dope, a drug delivery system for the twenty-first century.” Also, these small-town Mexican men were driven by addictions of their own, continuously taunted by dreams of fame, material excess, and Levi’s 501s.
The Xalisco Boys’ run-ins with other drug gangs shows that the drug business exists within a competitive free market. When he refers to the Xalisco Boys as “the Internet of dope,” Quinones suggests that, like other legitimate businesses, the Xalisco Boys continue to be successful because they were able to adapt their business model to fit the demands of the contemporary culture. The Xalisco Boys’ thirst for Levi’s 501s is reflective of contemporary America’s addiction to excessive consumerism.
Themes
The Xalisco Boys’ world was changing by 2014: more dealers, many of them addicts, entered the market, and brown powder heroin grew more potent and more competitive. In Xalisco, a rising avocado industry employs many. With consequences for drug crimes mounting, many of Xalisco’s young men turn to the legitimacy offered by the avocado industry.
Because the drug business exists with the free market, competition is unavoidable. Xalisco’s growing avocado industry suggests that more competition and legal consequences have pushed a growing number of former traffickers out of the market. Again, Quinones emphasizes the capitalism at play in the drug trade.
Themes
Months later, Quinones visits “heroin court” in Columbus, Ohio. The courtroom is filled to the brim with addicts. There are hundreds of these cases each year. Scott VanDerKarr, the judge presiding over these cases, is a former prosecutor. Today, he’s understanding, but he reiterates that addicts “need clear limits and consequences.”
VanDerKarr’s view that addicts “need clear limits and consequences” evokes Quinones’s speculation that the pain revolution has created a generation of Americans incapable of facing pain, discomfort, or “consequences,” and wanting the easy way out.
Themes
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Back in Santa Fe, Robert Berardinelli, motivated by his arrest in Operation Tar Pit, has turned his life around. He’s sober, has worked as a counselor, and has been a Narcotics Anonymous leader. Drug use stills runs rampant around Santa Fe, and Berardinelli is particularly shocked by the number of kids involved. Still, he has no hard feelings toward the Xalisco Boys: he describes them as “nice guys, clean-cut, […] just working-class boys trying to get ahead.”
Since becoming sober, Berardinelli has become more involved with his community, which demonstrates Quinones’s position that community can be a remedy to addiction. Berardinelli’s sympathy toward the Xalisco Boys portrays them as cogs in the capitalist machine, emphasizing the economic aspect of the drug trade.
Themes
