Kentucky
J.D. writes fondly about his background in the “hollers” of Kentucky. He describes the greenery and the rivers. Yet at the same time, he talks about how it is incredibly economic depressed. It is in this landscape that the stereotypical “hillbilly” dwells. While it is idyllically beautiful, it forces workers, like J.D.’s grandfather, to move away at the prospect of employment.
Alcoholism
J.D.’s grandfather, Papaw, suffered from alcoholism for much of his life. J.D. tells stories about how he would get so intoxicated that he would start fights—at one point, he threw the family’s Christmas tree out the back door. The portrayals of his drinking are stark and upsetting. They demonstrate the ways in which a child's development can be affected by circumstances like familial alcoholism. These circumstances are also replicated in J.D’s mother, as she suffers from drug addiction.
Hillbilly Culture
As the name Hillbilly Elegy suggests, much of the work centers around the hillbilly stereotype in American culture. Vance is frank and admits that much of his family fits into this characterization. He describes the typical male hillbilly, with rotting teeth and a love for alcohol. Vance makes no attempt to debunk these stereotypes and in fact embraces; to some extent, he identifies with them. At the same time, he tries to humanize these categorizations and tells intimate stories to disrupt the hillbilly stereotype. He also tries to provide a history and rationale for how these stereotypes developed.
The Rust Belt
Living in Middletown, Ohio in the 1980s, J.D. saw the decline of the manufacturing industry in the United States. He notices the lines of a tennis court fading, and how neighborhood bikes begin to get stolen. He describes the economic prospects of the region as a “mudslide.” He paints a bleak picture of the commercial landscape, with a strip mall that is “mostly bare.” There are shops with broken or boarded-up windows and faded signs for closed stores. He pairs these images with statistics on the region’s decline. In this sense, he visually portrays the social effects of the decline of the American manufacturing sector.
