Crank

“Bree is / no imaginary playmate, / no overactive pituitary, / no alter ego, moving in. / Hers is the face I wear, / treading the riptide, / fathomless oceans where / good girls drown.”

The relationship between Kristina and Bree is one of the most fascinating aspects of Crank. It is easy to classify Bree as Kristina’s “alter ego” or double, but Kristina shows here how Bree is too difficult and complex for narrow definitions. Bree is best described as Kristina herself forging a new, adult identity.

“Maybe he wasn’t perfect. / But he was still my dad.”

Kristina aptly sums up why her and Marie’s views on Kristina’s father differ. While Marie can assess her ex more objectively, for Kristina he will always be her biological father, despite his flaws. For Kristina to view her father dispassionately and distance herself from his problematic behaviors, she needs grown-up resolve and perspective, which she still does not have, being a teenager.

“We used to / do coke, till ‘Just / Say No’ put the stuff / out of reach. Now it’s crank. / Meth. The monster. It’s a bitch / on the body, but damn do you fly.”

Kristina’s father here refers to the “Just Say No” public service ad campaign that was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s in the government’s war against drugs, specifically cocaine. His statement shows that addiction is a hydra-headed problem. While coke became difficult to procure in the 1980s and 1990s, meth became popular, despite being even more harmful.

“Funny thing about the monster. / The worse he treats you, / the more you love him.”

Hopkins personifies meth as “the monster” to show how it is not just an inanimate subject, but a larger-than-life force manipulating people who use it. Kristina often describes the monster in intimate terms, much like an abusive lover, parent, or god. The more meth mistreats her or harms her body and mind, the more she craves the substance. The personification, and the implied comparison to an abusive boyfriend, help the reader identify with Kristina’s conundrum.

“Kristina is who they made me. / Bree is who I choose to be.”

Kristina solves the Kristina/Bree puzzle for Adam, explaining that Kristina represents the expectations others have of her, while Bree is Kristina outgrowing those expectations to become her own person.

“With you, I am Adam. / And you are my beautiful / Eve. Let’s run away, / find our garden, live there / together, happy. Naked.”

Adam’s passionate comment to Kristina may make her swoon, but his words also show that he is too smooth to be wholly trusted. Adam describes himself and Kristina as Adam and Eve, the primordial couple, but the truth is that, at this point, they have only met twice. Adam seems to be rushing Kristina into a relationship, and his assertion that he and Kristina should live “naked” shows he wants to coax her into sex.

“Girls get screwed.”

Kristina’s cynical statement is a powerful indictment of society’s double standards for women. Girls can never meet societal standards, which demand they be popular but aloof, sexy but not too sexual, giving but not available. After Kristina gives into Adam’s demand to use her hands to make him orgasm, she feels cheapened because of the pressure of these standards.

“And you want to shout, / can’t you see / I’m here? Can’t you see I’m / brand new? / Can’t you see me at all?”

It might seem paradoxical that Kristina wants to keep her addiction a secret yet wants her family to notice she has fundamentally changed when she returns to Reno. However, her contradictory desire can be read as a disguised call for support. A part of Kristina knows she may be in over her head with the addiction and wants her family to somehow step in and help. Her opposing impulses illustrate The Complex Nature of Addiction.

“Chase Wagner and Bill Shakespeare. / Talk about your strange bedfellows. / I was in line for that ménage à trois.”

Kristina’s funny comment about Chase shows her own wit and intelligence. It also shows that dismissing people because of their appearance—as Marie may tend to do—is a bad idea. Chase may seem like the stereotypical wild teenager but is actually well-read and bright, much like Kristina herself.

“It was the first time in a long time I’d out and out / lied and it bothered me. For about five minutes.”

Kristina is brutally honest about her changed behavior once she develops an addiction. She highlights how addiction begins to consume her, becoming the sole driving force of her life. Here, she lies to her mother about going out with Chase and feels remorseful. However, the remorse is short-lived because addiction has altered the way Kristina responds to reality.

“I wondered if I should / confess that her sweet, intelligent / little Kristina did not exist / anymore.”

This thought comes to Kristina after Marie grounds her again for lying. It shows Kristina’s deteriorating relationship with her mother, whom she now wants to hurt and spite. It also shows that Marie’s strict parenting style may be unwittingly alienating Kristina, making Kristina confuse risk-taking behaviors for asserting her autonomy against her mother.

“And it occurred to me for one uneasy moment / that every move I had made lately might have / started a landslide. / What if I couldn’t go back? What if I died in the crash?”

Addiction is a constant struggle between good intentions and compulsive behavior, as Kristina’s poignant statement shows. Even while Kristina knows she will sneak out with Brendan to score some meth, she questions her own compulsion. She is rightfully afraid that every decision she makes to continue her addiction will have a huge ripple effect on her life, but she is powerless to act on that fear.

“I mean, who wants to trudge through life, doing / everything just right? Taking no chances means / wasting your dreams.”

After Kristina is grounded for lying to go out with Chase, she plans to sneak out to meet Brendan. A part of her questions this decision, but another part quells the doubt with a quote that could be classified as inspirational. The use of the quote about the importance of taking chances shows the cunning manner in which addiction operates. It tells the person the story they want to hear, blurring the line between chasing one’s dreams and enacting self-destructive behaviors.

“Forgiveness / granted, I made some / decisions: appreciate / family, focus on / school and hunt / for Kristina.”

After Marie forgives her for swearing at her, a remorseful Kristina decides to fight her addiction with renewed vigor. Her resolution does not last, but this episode shows how sometimes forgiveness can be a far more effective punishment than punishment itself.

“Have you ever / had so much to say / that your mouth closed up tight / struggling to harness the nuclear force / coalescing within your words?”

Kristina’s rage after Brendan rapes and mocks her is natural, but Kristina is forced to bottle in her anger. She cannot report Brendan to the police since the rape occurred during a transaction of drugs. She is too traumatized and scared to say anything to the violent and sadistic Brendan.

“Robyn the Reno High Cheerleader / proceeded to show me a whole new / way to get down with the monster.”

Kristina’s observation about Robyn is loaded with irony. A cheerleader, the all-American symbol of femininity, should be the last person who would use meth. Yet Robyn shows Kristina a more potent way to consume the drug. The name “Robyn”—reminiscent of a wholesome, cheerful bird—is an ironic comment on the uselessness of assumptions. Through the example of Robyn, the narrative makes the important point that there is no one profile of a person who uses drugs. Anyone can develop an addiction.

“The most incredible place I’d / ever been was right inside of me.”

Kristina captures one of the key reasons why drugs appeal so powerfully to people. On ecstasy, she feels perfect and whole in herself. She does not need any other stimulus or reality to feel complete. This illusion fuels her addiction, alienating her from friends, family, work, and hobbies.

“If you / acquaint your / self with your / self, you don’t / always like the person you find / inside.”

Kristina’s introspective thoughts during one of the times she is grounded are presented as a broken, syncopated line of verse. The literary style amplifies Kristina’s self-loathing and speaks to The Difficulty of Finding an Identity. The lines are extremely short and sharply enjambed, mirroring the alienation Kristina feels from her own self. This passage exemplifies Hopkins’s unique literary style in Crank.

“Crank, You See / isn’t any ordinary / monster. It’s like a / giant octopus, / weaving / its tentacles not / just around you, / but through you, / squeezing / not hard enough to / kill you, but enough / to keep you from / reeling / until you try to get / away.”

Hopkins often uses personification, metaphor, and hyperbole to describe The Complex Nature of Addiction. In this passage, Kristina compares meth to an octopus. Not only is meth a monster, but it is also a monster unlike any other. These literary devices help capture the cunning, overwhelming aspect of addiction. Every time Kristina makes a move to run away from the monster, it extends a tentacle to draw her back in. The comparison to an octopus is also an example of the text’s use of animal imagery to illustrate its themes.

“That’s what I became that day. A dealer. / I had just taken a very big step up / in the hierarchy of the monster.”

Kristina’s move from using to dealing drugs is ironically described as a step up. However, Kristina shows this progression is actually a descent into worsening addiction. What Kristina describes is a common phenomenon: People who have developed an addiction sometimes deal drugs themselves to fund that addiction. The move is pernicious because by dealing drugs, they may be perpetuating a cycle of suffering for others.

“You’ve probably heard / that story before. But until you’re / in those shoes, / wearing them seems / so straightforward. Keep your baby? / Give it away? / Abort your baby? / Give it life? / If you think you / have a clear idea, try throwing drugs / into that picture. / Not quite so cocky now, / are you?”

Of her confusion on discovering she is pregnant, Kristina says that the next course of action may appear easy on the outside. For the person in the middle of this monumental change, however, nothing is easy. Discovering one is pregnant at 17 would be tough for anyone, but for a person dealing with addiction, all decisions become exponentially more difficult. In asking the reader not to judge her for her confusion, Kristina is also asking the reader to be empathetic about her struggles with addiction. It is easy to think such things only happen to other people. The truth is that all “other people” are people like Kristina and the reader.

“How it eats big holes in the brain, destroys / the pleasure center. How it shows up / in X rays as big black dead spots spoiling gray matter.”

For most of the novel, Kristina has described her addiction in intimate, subjective terms. However, once she becomes pregnant and decides to keep the pregnancy, her perspective on meth expands to include objective data and scientific facts. The shift in perspective shows she is now considering meth from the point of view of a parent whose child may be affected by drug use. Kristina’s observations also help the reader connect with the objective horror of meth abuse. Meth literally destroys brain and nerve cells.

“‘Addiction’ is much more / than a buzzword.”

Pregnant with Hunter, Kristina has to force herself to stay away from meth. The struggle this involves shows her that addiction is not just a label or a scientific term. It is the reality of grappling with drug withdrawal, altered brain chemistry, and constant cravings. Hopkins highlights this aspect of addiction to show readers that the best way to beat a meth addiction is to never use meth at all. Even one-time meth usage is enough to trigger an addiction in many people. Since beating the addiction is extremely hard, people, especially teenagers, need to be informed about the reality of drug addiction.