All the Devils are Here

In this novel, Louise Penny suggests that all people are capable of doing good and doing bad. Therefore, good and bad are not necessarily dichotomies. Rather, they are two indelible potentials that each human must wrestle between throughout their life experiences.

The first example of this theme is in Fontaine’s questioning of Stephen’s past in the Resistance. While Armand had always understood that Stephen had worked for the Resistance against the Nazis in Paris, Fontaine’s photographic evidence suggests that Stephen had worked with the Nazis. This questioning of Stephen’s essential character highlights the theme of good and bad because the line between doing good and doing bad can be so thin and fragile, as the world learned during World War II. While Stephen may appear to be working with the Nazis in an effort to infiltrate their organization and help the Resistance, one photograph cannot prove his goodness or his badness.

The second example of this theme is Claude Dussault and his character arc. The reader is not quite certain that Claude is the true antagonist in this novel. On the one hand, for most of the chapters he seems to be accurately under suspicion by Armand. After all, the cologne, the ambition for more money, and the fact that good people can be corrupted all match up with Claude’s behavior and Armand’s suspicions of him. Yet in the end, Claude had been doing bad things in order to help the greater good in taking down GHS Engineering. Which instinct should Armand—and the reader—heed? The one that says that Claude acts guilty, or the one that reminds Armand that Claude is an old and good friend? Ultimately, Claude is proven to be on Armand’s side, but he is also held responsible for the ripple effect of bad things that happened during the investigation of GHS Engineering.

To a lesser degree, Armand also embodies this theme in the Archives Nationales, when he represses his urge to do physical harm to Séverine Arbour, whom he blames for Daniel’s capture. The point here is that, though Armand does have an instinct to do bad, he chooses to do good. Thus, Penny shows her reader that everyone is capable of wanting to do bad but equally as capable of choosing to do good.

GHS Engineering also emphasizes this theme. On the one hand, GHS Engineering is responsible for the death of hundreds of people because of their misuse of the rare element neodymium. But on the other hand, GHS Engineering has completed projects all over the world that improved peoples’ quality of life. GHS Engineering is an interesting element through which to explore this theme because analysis of the company asks the reader to consider the corporations that run their lives. If consumers knew all of the depths of bad that a powerful corporation is capable of, would it and should it influence how consumers feel about the company’s product?