History Literature / TheDevilAllTheTime

* CoolGun: Willard's souvenir gun from his time in the war, a P08 Luger in 9mm, to his father. [[spoiler:After Willard's suicide, Arvin's grandfather gifts him the pistol to remember his father.]] The distinctive nature of the Luger and the rarity of 9mm ammunition amongst civilians at the time is what [[spoiler:helps Sheriff Lee Bodecker pinpoint who killed Preston Teagardin, his sister Sandy, and her husband]].

* ItGetsEasier: Carl looks mildly uncomfortable while killing his second victim, who is calmly accepting his death. By his 14th victim, he's totally fine with brutally torturing his victim by shooting his balls off and ignores his begging and pleading while taking pictures. Inverted with Sandy, who is disgusted and horrified near the end and looks away.

** Roy is an unstable religious fanatic who pours spiders on himself to prove his faith in God and later [[spoiler: kills his wife because he believes that he can bring her back to life.]]

* PedophilePriest: [[spoiler:Reverend Preston Teagardin is a hebephile who ends up seducing 15-year-old Lenora.]]

* ImmediateContradiction: The pastor who speaks in the beginning, Roy, swears that not even Hitler could come up with something bad enough to even compare with Satan's punish,ent for sinners. Then he goes on to say that his childhood arachnophobia and the accompanying nightmares -- ''that's'' what Hell is like.

* SenselessSacrifice: Willard kills his son's dog as a sacrifice to God as a desperate means to save his wife (who is dying of cancer) life. It doesn't work.

* SinisterMinister: Both Coal Creek church Reverends:

* TraumaCongaLine: Don't you hate it when [[spoiler:your mother gets cancer and your violent father kills your dog and skins it and crucifies it above his "prayer log" as a sacrifice and it doesn't work and your mother dies and your father cuts his own throat directly under the corpse of your dog and your adopted sister gets DrivenToSuicide by a corrupt preacher so you snap and kill the preacher and flee town but then your car breaks down and you hitch a ride with a nice couple of [[SerialKiller Serial Killers]] whom you only barely escape from with your life and finally you return to your burned-down childhood home to bury the remains of your dog and then out of nowhere a corrupt shotgun-wielding sheriff turns up to murder you?]] And that's only in the film. The book is worse.

** Reverend Preston Teagardin character has many of these moments such as him insulting Arvins grandmothers food and blaming Leonora for the pregnency.

* NeverMyFault: During Arvins confrontation with him, Reverend Preston Teagardin refuses to admit any involment or blame for what happen to Leonora.

* ChekhovsGun: The Luger pistol that Willard own and is given to his son Arvin in the early section of the movie is used [[spoiler:when Arvin kills Reverend Preston, Carl, Sandy and Lee at the end of the film.]]

Donald Ray Pollock's 2011 novel set in the [[TheFifties 1950s]] and [[TheSixties 1960s]] [[DeepSouth Midwest]]. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, ''The Devil All the Time'' follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII to the 1960s. There’s [[ShellShockedVeteran Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific]], who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right]].