There is a passage in City of God which applies to Dollarhyde insofar as he represents the 'presence' of Satan. It explains how it is that the killer can have a 'good side' to him, a side which is in part shown to consist of sensitiveness, as depicted when he is on the verge of crying while in bed with Reba (as shown at left). From City of God, Book 19, chapter 13:
[There is] a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of the devil himself is evil, in so far as it is nature, but it was made evil by being perverted...The good imparted by God to his nature did not screen him from the justice of God by which order was preserved in his punishment; neither did God punish the good which He had created, but the evil which the devil had committed.
God did not take back all he had imparted to his nature, but something He took and something He left, that there might remain enough to be sensible of the loss of what was taken. And this very sensibility to pain is evidence of the good which has been taken away and the good which has been left. For, were nothing good left, there could be no pain on account of the good which had been lost.
City of God (Dods)
