55 pages • 1 hour read
Louise PennyAll the Devils are Here
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Paris
In this novel, Paris acts as a motif for the balance between light and darkness. Known as the City of Light, Paris is a twinkly environment with beautiful streets and gorgeous architecture. Paris is popularly associated with romance, good food, and beauty. Such a space is an appropriate setting for a murder mystery because where there is beauty, there must be ugliness. Though Paris might have certain cultural connotations with light and love, it is also a metropolis of diverse people, a winding city, and often inhospitable to outsiders. Paris represents the fragile dichotomy between good and bad because there is so much possibility for bad in such a city.
Around Paris, there are signs of a dark history warped by time to seem romanticized when in fact, the French are still dealing with the ripple effects of their colonialism and World War II. The sort of selective amnesia of a city trying to forget its past while at the same monumentalizing its history is symbolically important to the novel. As the outsider, Armand Gamache is better able to acknowledge those gaps between perception and truth. Paris often acts as the clue itself to Armand’s winding theories. In addition, there are so many places to hide in plain sight in Paris, thereby making these winding theories more difficult to prove without being too obvious.
Hell
Hell is alluded to throughout the novel as a setting, a theory, and a state of mind. Hell is not finding out the truth until it’s too late; hell is not seeing the signs right in front of you; hell is trusting the wrong person, hell is Paris, hell is fearing for the life of your son, hell is not being able to trust anybody. These forms are important to Penny’s exploration of the subtle difference between good and evil. While hell is symbolic for a place where truly bad people go to, Penny suggests that because everyone can get to hell, people are also capable of creating a hell in their own lives and homes. There is also this issue with hell and heaven in which the reader asked to think about if a good person doing bad things automatically makes them bad. Claude Dussault is a great example of this throughout the novel. Is Claude bad because he allowed the murder of Alex Plessner to happen for the potential of a greater good? Is Claude bad because he manipulated Armand into believing that Daniel would be killed? Or do Claude’s good intentions outweigh the ripple effect of bad that occurred in these chapters?
Essentially, Penny wants her reader to see that good and bad, heaven and hell, are not as obvious as the juxtaposition between the terms suggests.
The Painting
The small watercolor painting hanging in Stephen Horowitz’s apartment becomes an important and multilayered symbol in the novel. Armand grew up noticing the simple beauty of that painting versus the grandiose mastery of Stephen’s more priceless and famous art. That small watercolor painting teaches Armand that bigger and more expensive doesn’t mean more valuable. Whenever Armand sees the painting, he is reminded of Stephen’s fatherly role in his life and is comforted by its image. Thus, the painting symbolizes both family connection and the idea that less is more.
What’s more, the painting hides Stephen’s major piece of evidence against GHS Engineering. Perhaps because it seems so much less valuable than his other pieces of art, Stephen outsmarts the elite SecurForte by tricking them into seeing what he wants them to see (the bigger art pieces) versus what they ought to be seeing (the small watercolor painting). Thus, this painting also symbolizes a tricky safety, one that is fragile but nonetheless important because the painting can keep secrets.
The other secret this painting hides is a big piece of Stephen’s emotional past. It is not until Daniel brings the painting back to Québec does he see the signature on the back of the painting. A woman named Arlette, whose daughter credits Stephen for saving her life from the Nazis, painted this artwork for Stephen. The loving signature implies a relationship between Stephen and Arlette, perhaps even that Arlette’s daughter is also Stephen’s unknown daughter. This emphasizes the painting’s symbol of family and keeping secrets. It also highlights the love that informs family and secret-keeping.
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By Louise Penny
