Deacon King Kong is at its heart the story of a community grappling with social change in 20th-century America. The novel is populated with various characters in and surrounding the Cause Houses, which act as the epicenter of the novel’s conflicts and action. This common location and the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the Cause is located give all the characters a unifying identity, even if they relate to the area differently (for example, Potts works in the neighborhood but doesn’t live there, and Elefante doesn’t live in the Cause Houses but is still a part of the larger neighborhood). In a video interview from August 2020 shortly after Deacon King Kong was published, McBride states that he views the story as being chiefly about a community. He says that Sportcoat’s attempt to shoot Deems “hits all the levers and gets all the elevators started” (Award-Winning Author… 02:09-02:13), a metaphor that implies that members of the community act as parts of a larger whole, influencing and affecting one another.

McBride also says that the events of the book “[move] this whole community to act in concert” (Award-Winning Author… 02:21-02:23). Deacon King Kong portrays a community that is threatened by destructive social forces outside of its control, such as racism, poverty, immigration that erodes traditional communities (a displacement that sometimes results in a new, diverse community such as that of the Cause and its neighborhood), the increased presence of hard drugs and resulting addiction and crime, and the individual and collective despair that can result because these forces were so concentrated on minorities in late 20th-century America.