- Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All The Time

The Devil All The Time, a novel by Donald Ray Pollock, is set during post-World War II in rural Ohio and West Virginia. Pollock narrates the intertwined stories of a predatory preacher, a corrupt sheriff, and a serial killer couple all of whom converge on the life of one boy一Arvin Eugene Russell. Yet, these characters were not the most decimating contributions to Arvins person, his father was. 

Knockemstiff, Ohio, a remote and tight-knit holler, is home to Arvin and his parents, Willard and Charlotte. The setting is detrimental to Arvins upbringing as hollers are known for being disconnected from their more urban counterparts as they are located in the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. Nearly all of the people in Knockemstiff are “connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another” (p.4). Incest is weaponized against Arvin’s family by alienating them from the town whose fate is bound by their (commonly considered as a) immorality. Pollock illustrates how morality is shaped through Arvin’s family’s lack of kinship to a group whose fate is bound by sin. 

Arvin’s father was a former U.S. Marine who came back home from serving in World War II with a radical relationship to God一one reliant on sacrifice. While in the Solomon Islands he had to shoot a fellow marine, Miller Jones, who had been “skinned alive by the Japanese and nailed to a cross made out of two palm trees” (p.14). Jones’s crucifixion implicates Willard’s perception of atonement as being linked to suffering and punishment. With the prayer log in mind, I draw another location-related parallel一Calvary. Though there are several opposing nuances in the sentiment behind Calvary and Willard’s prayer log, they are both rooted in a process of anguish. For Willard, it cannot be helped that his torment extremizes his sacrificial and redemptive nature as well as his divine devotion even when it hurts him.

Willard indoctrinates Arvin into his beliefs primarily through the prayer log一a large wooden cross with a log at the bottom一that he built in the woods behind their home. He creates a new space for him to connect to God as “[h]e had never felt comfortable worshipping God around strangers packed together inside a building” (p.27). Willard’s notion of prayer, he feels, is too radical for what is encouraged in the town’s church. 

The novel starts with Willard instructing Arvin to stand up for himself the next time he is being bullied by advising him that “‘the next time one of ’em starts his shit, I want you to finish it’” (p.4). Arvin is often bullied for not being a blood-relative of anyone in their town besides his parents一the absence of other adults or children in his life narrows his options for cultivating a worldview other than his fathers. As they pray, a pair of hunters walk by and one of them makes a crude comment about Charlotte, Willard’s wife and Arvin’s mom. Arvin is seized by fear of what they might do to his mom but his father reprimands him by saying “‘This here is the Lord’s time, not nobody else’s’” (p.5). For Willard, fear is often disguised as reverence.

After their prayers, they go to the store where Willard locates the two hunters and nearly beats one to death and threatens the life of the other. Arvin thinks of this as “the best day he ever spent with his father” (p.10), having only ever witnessed his father fend for his family with force. All of this occurs after their daily prayers leading Arvin to conclude that seeking retribution through physical violence is excusable as long as you ask God for forgiveness. Arvin believes his father to be a righteous man. Willard considers his actions as fair because he is defending Charlotte’s honor, but he has confused his desire for revenge as an act of justice enabled by God. 

Charlotte is diagnosed with cancer and due to their location and impoverished conditions, Willard is unable to obtain or afford proper medical resources and treatment for her. He, of course, turns to God. Willard forces Arvin into more intensive prayer until he sees that Charlotte is not getting better, making him believe that God is not listening. Being incapable of moderation, Willard begins sacrificing animals and even a person in hopes that God will reward his piety, that He will redeem him. Through the worst of Charlotte’s illness, Arvin and Willard pray from sunrise to sundown beneath the hanging corpses of Willards sacrifices. 

When Charlotte passes away Arvin is relieved, the torture of constantly smelling rot and being covered in maggots is over. Willard inadvertently traumatizes his son to save Charlotte, which he fails to do, Arvins suffering is in vain. Arvin is taken in by his grandma, Emma, and Uncle Earskell following Willards suicide. Emma and Earskell live in Coal Creek, West Virginia, away from Knockemstiff. Emma begins to regret her leniency on religion for Arvin when she begins to “see Willard in him, especially when it came to the fighting” (pp.123-4) as he grows older. Though, unlike Willard, he does not entirely rely on God to fix his problems. When the opportunity presents itself, he mirrors his father in doing what he believes is right一protection through vengeance. 

The death of his pseudo-sister, Lenora, triggers a series of events. Lenora was impregnated by the new predatory preacher, Teagardin, who rejects her when he finds out she is pregnant, resulting in her suicide. Arvin has, what I believe to be, a revelation that is fueled by the same anguish his father felt having experienced a final and dire loss of control. He shoots Teagardin and on his way back to Knockemstiff, he is picked up by a couple, Sandy and Carl, who offer him a ride to Meade, Ohio. 

Sandy and Carl are disclosed as serial killers earlier in the novel who pick up men and photograph them as they kill them. When Carl proposes that Arvin models with Sandy for a few photos, Arvin is filled with a feeling that “suddenly twisted in his gut like a knife” (p.273). In a hopeful and perhaps redemptive lens, I view this as Arvin experiencing divine intervention. He was never bound to the same chaotic end as the residents of Knockemstiff. Besides the religious premise of the novel, another reason I believe something larger than coincidence is at play is that Carl had replaced the bullets in Sandy’s gun with blanks. Carl’s doubt in Sandy’s devotion to his “artistry” led him to suspect she would kill him and flee the law successfully since her brother, Lee Bodecker, was a sheriff. After this whole debacle Arvin continues back to Meade on foot and where his house used to be. Among the various animals Willard had sacrificed was Arvins dog, Jack. The last thing Arvin wished to do before completely disappearing was to give Jack a proper burial which he does as soon as he arrives at the prayer log. Bodecker had tracked Arvin down to his childhood home once he figured out it was Arvin who had killed Carl, Sandy, and Teagardin. Arvin successfully avoids being shot by and shoots Bodecker. 

The novel ends with Arvin contemplating his future; the remnants of the prayer log are described as a “moss-covered log and the rotting gray crosses” (p.307). All of which he has endured has led him back to the place he was wrenched from. The ambiguous and cyclical ending can be taken as Arvin having found salvation and closure, but I do not believe this is the case. When Pollock mentions the moss and rot, he is depicting the consumption and death of Arvins future as being inextricably tied to the land he was born on. Arvin was fated to return and will continue to be haunted by his and his father’s actions. 

Works Cited

Pollock, Donald Ray. The Devil All The Time. 1st ed., Anchor Books, 2011.