We would not be shocked so much if an adult has met the Devil, because we all know that adults are more likely to commit sins. But what when a child meet the Devil? What would a child do wrong to be punished by the Devil? It is difficult to say."..This is something that happened to me when I was very young, only nine years old."(page 821) Our main character Gary was a young child when he saw the Devil for a reason he has never understood "Until that Saturday in 1914, I had thought that bears were the worst thing the forest could hold."(page 831) Kids think that bears are the most terrific creatures in the forest. We can see their huge innocence. Why does evil attack those innocent children? Because evil can attack anybody.
Our nine-year old character Gary meets the Devil in the town of Motton as he defines like this : "The town of Motton was a different world in those day - more different then I could ever tell you. That was a world without airplanes droning overhead, a world almost without cars." (page 821) As he talks about Motton, we learn that it is a little rural town in western Maine. There was no phone, no doctors, no paved roads and not more than a dozen of houses. All those little things make Motton a completely innocent place. Why would the Devil attack a little innocent farmer town? It does not seem so attractive...But evil does not have any criteria, it is omnipresent.
In "The Man in the Black Suit", Gary's meeting with evil happens during the summer of 1914. "... one afternoon in the summer of 1914." (page 821).