57 pages • 1 hour read
David SheffBeautiful Boy
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Searching for New Experiences
When Nic is young, Sheff is “proud of his confidence and individuality” (29) and his ability to “detect, before most kids, upcoming waves of popular culture” (30). As Nic grows older, this transforms into a tendency to be “into the edgiest music and then [grow] bored with it” (54). Sheff sees his son as an individual, unwilling to follow the crowd. As such, he grows concerned when teenage Nic begins to succumb to peer pressure (43). Sheff believes external influences are a key factor in Nic’s descent into drug addiction. Nic’s move away from individuality is symbolic of the powerful lure of drugs.
There is also another aspect to the symbolism of Nic’s restless search for newer, edgier things. In many ways, his childhood searching foreshadows his later desire for an experience or an intoxicant to provide him with psychological relief. Having left Paris and its “abundance of easily accessible liquor” (179), Nic begins smoking marijuana every day but reflects that “it wasn’t the same” (180). He soon progresses to harder drugs, taking “whatever I could find—E, LSD, mushrooms” until he eventually finds meth and feels “better than ever before in my life” (180). In this sense, Nic’s movement through “edgier” drugs, culminating in his meth addiction, mirrors his earlier search for, and discarding of, “the edgiest music” (54).
Vampire Checks
When Nic is very young, he has a nightmare in which “he and his classmates have to submit to vampire checks,” with teachers checking to see if the children have developed vampire fangs (32). Those who do are killed on the spot. When Nic reports this dream to Sheff, Nic reflects that the punishment “is unfair to the vampires, because they can’t help themselves” (32). Nic’s reasoning foreshadows later discussions of addiction. The vampire checks reflect Sheff and Nic’s occasionally reluctant acceptance of the disease model of addiction—that addicts have a disease and need to be given the chance to heal rather than be punished.
Great White Shark
When Sheff takes Jasper and Daisy to an aquarium, they find themselves watching an educational film. The footage shows cormorants feeding in the surf when “out of nowhere, the water erupts with evil gray, a mouthful of teeth, a great white shark, and a cormorant is swallowed whole. The shark’s tail whips around like a snapping rope and disappears” (219). The aquarium visit occurs when Sheff is feeling particularly powerless in the face of Nic’s escalating meth addiction; he begins to accept the very real possibility that Nic will die from an overdose or other drug-related complications. The footage is highly symbolic of these troubling thoughts, and Sheff’s powerlessness. He reflects, “I feel like the cormorant. A shark has appeared from the depths. I stare at it and helplessly see the approach—and with it the precariousness of Nic’s life—see how close he is to dying” (219).
Cerebral Hemorrhage
After Nic relapses yet again, Sheff begins to despair about his son. He has been ground down by the pain and worry and admits that “I wish that I could expunge Nic from my brain” (251), reflecting that “[s]ometimes it feels as if nothing short of a lobotomy could help” (251). Not long after this, he suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and is hospitalized.
Having suffered considerable brain trauma, Sheff is unable to answer even the simplest of the doctors’ questions. Despite this, all he can think is, “Where is Nic? Where is Nic? Where is Nic?” (276), even going as far as to call a nurse at three o’clock in the morning to beg, “Please, will you help me call my son?” (277). Sheff recalls how he had wished “in secret for a kind of lobotomy” (278) to stop worrying about Nic but now finds that “I cannot recall my name and the year and yet I am not spared the worrying that only parents of a child on drugs […] can comprehend” (278).
This moment reinforces Sheff’s love for, and commitment to Nic, making Sheff realize he will never abandon his son. At the same time, the injury is symbolic of his separation from Nic’s addiction. Sheff realizes that it “took my near death […] to comprehend that [Nic’s] fate—Jasper’s and Daisy’s, too—is separate from mine” (295). Sheff finally recognizes that his efforts to save Nic do not truly help Nic; he must find a way to detach from Nic’s recovery for his own health and the health of the rest of the family.
