THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME The Father Within Him

This article examines the father’s internal presence in Arvin Russell in Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time. It focuses on how Arvin’s relationship with Willard is unconsciously inscribed in the son’s somatopsychic organisation, shaping the connections between love and protection, threat and vigilance, and powerlessness and violent reaction. By distinguishing revenge from self-protection, the article explores whether Arvin merely repeats the paternal pattern or gradually differentiates what he has introjected. His relationship with his father is analysed as an internal presence that continues to affect his responses without necessarily determining his development in an inescapable and unchanging form.