selling your soul to the devil

The expression selling your soul to the devil turns a familiar image of spiritual surrender into a measure of Levee Green’s dissatisfaction with the limits around him. Slow Drag introduces it through a story about Eliza Cottor; Levee then recasts the supposed bargain as an opportunity he would actively seek. When the idea returns in an argument with Cutler, it is joined to Levee’s insistence that a person must move beyond what has been allotted to them. The phrase thus links a tale about the devil to Levee’s refusal to accept resignation as a way of life.

The Story Slow Drag Tells

Slow Drag begins with the account of a man who sold his soul to the devil, then identifies that man as Eliza Cottor, who lived in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. In Slow Drag’s telling, the devil came to Cottor and the bargain was made. The anecdote supplies a concrete figure and place for an expression that might otherwise remain an abstract warning, but the evidence does not say what happened to Cottor afterward. Its emphasis is on the encounter and the transaction itself.

Levee responds not with fear for Cottor but with interest in locating the devil. He says that, if God exists, God has gone to sleep, and presents the devil as someone he would be willing to meet and bargain with. That contrast makes the expression serve two purposes at once: it invokes a conventional danger, but also gives Levee a way to voice his sense that divine help is absent. His attention shifts from the cost of the bargain to the possibility of making it.

Levee’s Recasting of the Bargain

Levee’s response treats the devil as a prospective buyer and his soul as something he could offer. He asks where the devil is and indicates that even a handprint would be acceptable as a mark of agreement. Later, he says he wishes he knew where the devil had gone, that he would not need much persuasion, and that he would help recruit others. These successive remarks make his interest more than a passing reaction to Slow Drag’s anecdote: he repeatedly imagines seeking the buyer, consenting to the deal, and extending the invitation to other people.

The exchange also sharpens the difference between Levee and the story’s more cautionary framing. Slow Drag reports that someone made the bargain; Levee emphasizes how readily he would make one himself. His language makes the legendary transaction sound accessible and practical, while his remark about God’s absence places that willingness within an expressed crisis of faith. The evidence supports the contrast between those positions, though it does not establish that Levee has actually encountered the devil or completed any bargain.

Return to the Idea and Conflict with Cutler

The expression returns when Levee challenges the others for being satisfied with too little and remaining in one place. He distinguishes his point from the literal task of hauling wood: what he objects to is accepting a bone someone has thrown to them. He urges the group to move farther down the road and, throughout that movement, to watch for the devil who might buy souls. Finding him, Levee says, would depend on luck. The bargain has now become part of a broader argument about dissatisfaction and the need to seek a different condition rather than settle for what is offered.

Cutler answers by calling Levee’s talk blasphemy and directly names the idea of selling one’s soul to the devil. His response establishes a religious boundary that Levee’s repeated remarks cross. The disagreement is not only over whether such a bargain is acceptable: Levee frames spiritual risk as preferable to passive acceptance, whereas Cutler treats the talk itself as an offense. Their exchange leaves the phrase caught between two meanings, a condemned act of spiritual betrayal and, in Levee’s rhetoric, an imagined route out of constraint.

Significance of the Expression

Across these exchanges, the phrase changes function without losing its association with a bargain. Slow Drag’s account presents a reported transaction involving Eliza Cottor; Levee turns the story toward his own desire to find the devil and make an agreement; his later argument with Cutler connects that desire to movement, dissatisfaction, and resistance to settling. The recurrence gives Levee a blunt vocabulary for expressing how little confidence he has in divine intervention and how unwilling he is to accept the portion he believes has been assigned to him.

The expression does not resolve Levee’s conflict or demonstrate that the imagined bargain can deliver what he wants. Instead, its force comes from the contrast between the outcome left unspecified in Slow Drag’s story and Levee’s unmistakable readiness to pursue the possibility. Cutler’s rebuke marks the religious cost of that readiness, while Levee’s insistence on looking for the devil keeps the imagined alternative open. In this way, selling your soul to the devil becomes both a spiritual provocation and a compact expression of Levee’s refusal to treat resignation as sufficient.