The obvious social issues in Land of Loss arise from Christopher's sometimes angry intention to hurt others. For instance, he picks on David's Jewishness: "Hey, David. You're a Jew, right?"

"Half Jewish," he said.

"Yeah? Well you know the word 'schmuck'?

Did I pronounce that right? 'Schmuck'?

Or maybe you'd prefer a good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon word, you—" "Back off," David warned.

This passage illustrates Christopher's selfdestructiveness, because he knows better than to make mocking remarks about someone's ethnicity and to pick on someone like David, who is bigger and stronger than he is. When put in the context of the stress that at one point had Christopher crying at the dead end of a street, as well as Christopher's self-hatred, his taunting of David is just one more miserable outburst. But it also reveals an aspect of his character that goes beyond the normal anxiety...