Toward the end of the book, however, talking river otters begin to threaten Jared. But he tries to rationalize these visions by attributing to the drugs he takes. Jared sometimes sees visions of the Trickster raven Wee’git, who says that he is Jared’s real father, or prehistoric ape men walking around. Just as Jared and his loved ones try to escape from their everyday problems, Jared also tries to ignore the frightening magical beings that being appearing to him-but ignoring the magical realm he’s tapped into only makes it more dangerous and out of his control. As with Jared’s mom, Jared’s dad’s addiction takes complete control of his life, to the detriment of his whole family. As a result, he becomes absent from Jared’s life and has to be hospitalized to deal with his withdrawal, while Jared uses his own money (which he earns by selling marijuana cookies) to get his dad out of debt. Jared’s father, meanwhile, experiences a back injury and becomes addicted to his pain medications. In this way, the drugs (which are meant to help his mom escape from her anger at Jared) only put Jared’s mother completely out of control and worsen their relationship. Additionally, Jared’s mom is a drug addict, and when she becomes angry with Jared, she abandons him and disappears for months to do drugs. This suggests that in trying to stave off some of the sadness in his life, he is actually making his life worse-or even wasting it away. Yet, as a result, he gets into fights, gets sick and vomits, and gets drunk and high so often that he doesn’t remember entire days of his life. Even at a young age, Jared starts to use alcohol as a coping mechanism for some of the hardships in his life. Around the same time, Jared starts hanging out with some of the rebellious kids in school, “so he lose himself in gaming and stolen booze” as well as get high. When Jared’s father moves out and his parents get divorced, his mother has to sell most of their things to cover the cost of the house. Jared, as well as his mom and dad, use drugs and alcohol as a way of numbing themselves from their interpersonal problems-but, in reality, this only makes their problems worse. With this, Son of a Trickster suggests that trying to escape from or ignore one’s problems isn’t effective and often causes more harm in the long run-instead, it’s better to confront problems head-on. But neither of these strategies work-his drug use only makes him more miserable and less in control of his life, and trying to ignore magic only makes things worse and puts him and his loved ones in greater danger. He tries to numb himself from his practical, everyday problems through alcohol and drugs, and he also tries to avoid the magical beings that plague him by telling himself that he’s hallucinating or going crazy. None of the issues that plague him are within his control, and this lack of control over his own life leads him to self-destructive forms of escapism. Jared is a troubled teen with a host of problems: his mom and her violent boyfriends abuse and neglect him, and he also begins to experience distressing and confusing visions of magical beings.
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