Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Devil All the Time:
1.Why does religion play so prominent a role in this book? Does the novel present a single religious vision...or a number of different visions? Talk about each character's preoccupation with God and Jesus, sacrifice and pain, hell and salvation.
2. What role does poverty play in the characters' lives? In what ways are they also shaped by sense of place, the land itself?
3. Talk about each of the characters. Do you feel sympathy or revulsion for any of them? Are you overwhelmed by their violent deeds...or are you able to eek out some sense of their humanity? What motivates them to commit the brutality they perpetrate on their victims?
4. Does redemption exist for these people? In what way does Arvin Eugene Russell point to its possibility?
5. The deputy sheriff says, at one point, "some people were born just so they could be buried." What do you make of that statement? Do you believe there is truth in it—a great deal...some...or none at all?
6. What does the book's title mean?
7. How did you experience this novel as you read it? What were your emotional reactions? Did you want to put it down and walk away...or were you compelled to keep turning pages?