Work Ethic
At certain points, Hillbilly Elegy reads like a stern, paternal lecture on the value of hard work. It is principally in this voice that Vance conducts his social criticism. Writing about the jobs he had and his time in the Marines, Vance suggests that success only comes from applying oneself to the best of their abilities. It is this work ethic that separates him from his peers that never left Middletown, Ohio. In this sense, the book has motivational qualities and demonstrates the power of determination and work ethic.
The Impact of Upbringing
Much of Hillbilly Elegy is focused on the ways in which a child’s upbringing affects their life chances. Vance writes about his mother, who was raised by an alcoholic father and later suffered her own addiction issues. He speaks about his grandmother, who was raised in a violent household and exhibited a temper for the rest of her life. More personally, he details each of his mother’s four marriages and how they hindered his own abilities to have relationships in his adult life. At the end of the book, he is nearly involved in a road rage incident, and he connects that back to the lessons he learned as a child. At the same time, he suggests that his troubled upbringing also had positive outcomes, such as the self-reliance and determination it forged within him. In this sense, Vance firmly believes in the powerful effects of childhood nurturing.
The Value of Family
Just as Vance writes about the ways in which one's upbringing can negatively affect an individual, he also stresses the importance of family. He has a near encyclopedic knowledge of his own family tree and expresses a connection to all of his family. It is here that he finds inspiration and support, just as he finds violence and abandonment. He directly posits that he would have fallen into depression and abuse had it not been for his grandmother, who encouraged him to achieve all his dreams. It was also through his family that he learned the values of loyalty, a trait which his family particularly cherished. While they caused some of his most scarring pains, Vance firmly believes that family is one of life’s most important gifts.
The Sacrifices of Success
In congruence with his views on work ethic, Vance suggests that success must involve personal sacrifice. For example, he opted to risk his life in Iraq in order to attend college, and he missed the end of his grandmother’s life to serve in the Marines. In college, he was taken to the hospital because he was so overworked. He missed out on the fun of young adulthood by being so driven to achieve, which forged his opinion that in order to achieve, one must be willing to sacrifice.
A Sense of Place and Culture
Throughout Hillbilly Elegy, Vance speaks fondly of his roots in Kentucky. He recounts childhood memories of Jackson, Kentucky, which assumes a near Eden-like idealism in Vance’s memory. He feels a deep sense of connection to Kentucky and a commonality with those also from Kentucky. While he was raised in Ohio, Kentucky maintains a large role in his identity, one that he cannot shake even when he attends Yale, a world away from his chaotic upbringing. He also guesses that one reason working-class kids who achieve success like he did feel alienated once they do so is that they must sacrifice part of their roots in order to escape them. By this measure, the value of place and culture is very important to Vance.
Hillbilly Code of Honor
Vance writes at length about various family stories in which his relatives brutally beat or wounded strangers. All these stories take on a heroic bent, since each time a member of the Vance family used violence to solve problems, it was supposedly according to a hillbilly code of honor wherein any insult to one's family is punishable with violence. Similarly, Vance learned to end a fight when someone else starts it. At the same time, although his family entertained young Vance with these stories, the violence became too personal as he got older and saw his mother acting violently upon her partners, or Mamaw punishing Papaw for drinking with violence. For much of the book, Vance struggles with the question of whether this tradition of violence, nurtured by the harsh hillbilly culture, is a tradition from which he can escape.
The American Dream
Mamaw and Papaw's move from Kentucky to Ohio is meaningful to the Vance family in that, at least in the eyes of Vance's grandparents, it marks their first steps towards achieving the American Dream. Vance's grandparents believe wholly in the concept of the American Dream, and by extension, that by working a steady, blue-collar job, they will improve the chances that their children will achieve even greater success. However, their path to the American Dream is hindered when their children absorb the various stresses that come with spousal discord, including alcoholism and violence. As a result of this, some of their children—primarily Vance's mother, Bev—actually reverse this path towards the American Dream, regressing to the kind of behavior that would befit Jackson, Kentucky, and later, Middletown, Ohio. Luckily, although Vance was set back by his mother's poor choices, Mamaw gave him the support he needed to transcend his circumstances and succeed beyond the wildest dreams of his family. Thus, Vance charts an ordinary, working-class family's path to the American Dream, proving that it's a path defined by a "two steps forward, one step back" trajectory rather than a straight line.
