Previous
Thursday
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Omens, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
Human Nature
Destiny vs. Free Will
Humor and Absurdity
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Sable sits in the back of his limousine. He’s on the phone discussing the launch of MEALS, a diet product that contains no nutritional value. Sable is in the lot of a Burger Lord, where he’s testing Hamburger MEALS. Inside, he orders a burger and shake. The other patrons seem no more disgusted than they’d be at another burger joint. As Sable stands, a deliveryman catches him. Sable signs for the package with his real name, which is six letters long and rhymes with examine. The package contains brass scales, which Sable shoves in his pocket. Back in the limo, Sable asks his driver to get him a ticket to England and to cancel all future appointments.
The package that Sable receives hearkens back to Red receiving the sword in the previous chapter—which adds more credence to the possibility that Red and Sable are two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Indeed, given that Sable is launching diet products, sometimes kills people (which the novel previously revealed), and has a real name that rhymes with examine, all signs point to him being the Horsman Famine. In the Book of Revelation in the Bible, Famine carries scales that represent the way food might be weighed during a famine. Thus, the scales that Sable receives are an indicator that Armageddon is coming—hence why he needs to get to England, where Armageddon is supposed to start.
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Themes
The Them listens with interest as Adam tells them all about what he learned from New Aquarian. He announces that “they” paid Charles Fort to go away, so he sailed away in the Mary Celeste and founded the Bermuda Triangle. When Wensleydale points out that there was no one on the Mary Celeste when they found the ship, Adam scathingly says that the UFOs came and took Fort away. The Them love UFOs, but they’re not as interested in Adam’s New Age UFOs. Pepper says that if she was an alien, she’d shoot people with laser blasters, not tell them about “mystic cosmic harmony.” But Adam insists that the aliens have changed their ways, and now, they’re like galactic police who encourage beings to get along.
In this speech to the Them, Adam touches on a variety of historical events and figures. In the early 20th century, researcher Charles Fort took to studying and writing about paranormal phenomena. The Mary Celeste, on the other hand, was a ship that was found without a crew off the coast of Portugal, while the Bermuda Triangle is a swath of the Atlantic Ocean where a number of ships and aircraft have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Adam is seemingly putting these unrelated things together to create a narrative that makes sense to him. Regardless of how accurate any of this is, his insistence that aliens are turning into galactic police is important: he seems to want to craft a world where people get along, a mark of his potential for good.
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Brian asks why they’re even called Unidentified Flying Objects, when they’re clearly flying saucers. Adam says that the Government hushes everything up, but he can’t tell the Them why (New Aquarian never gave an explanation). It’s just what governments do—for instance, nuclear power stations blow up all the time, but the Government keeps people from finding out. Wensleydale objects to this; his dad says that nuclear power is safe and means they don’t have to live in a greenhouse.
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Adam stops the Them’s bickering by asking severely if they want to hear about the Aquarium Age or not. He says that in America, the Government scolds people all the time for seeing UFOs. Then, there’s Atlantis. The Them debate what they would’ve done had they been on Atlantis when it sank. Wensleydale insists that he would’ve stayed and worn a diver’s helmet. Brian is thrilled that in all that water, he wouldn’t have to bathe. Then, the Them begin to play a game called Charles Fort Discovering Things. Adam is pleased—the cowboys and pirates of his imagination are nothing compared to the Aquarium Age.
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People have spent centuries trying to make sense of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies. Anathema has, thus far, done the best, but none of those people were angels. Aziraphale is nothing if not intelligent, being an angel with thousands of years of practice. He sits reading Agnes’s book, scribbling symbols that few others would be able to comprehend.
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Over lunch, Anathema pores over her maps—Tadfield is brimming with shifting ley-lines. On the radio, a BBC reporter is interviewing a spokesman about an entire missing nuclear reactor—and the odd fact that the plant is still producing power. Anathema notices that the ley lines are forming a spiral, centered loosely on Lower Tadfield. Meanwhile, several thousand miles away, a cruise ship captain tries to come up with the appropriate code to send the ship’s owners. He’s just run aground on Atlantis, and men in diving helmets are mingling with the ship’s passengers.
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The Them sit in the quarry, arguing about the Hollow Earth Theory. Wensleydale doesn’t buy it, since the holes in the Earth that Adam describes don’t appear in atlases. Adam says the Government won’t let people put it in atlases, and then he brings up the Tibetan tunnels. Some teachers who left Atlantis went to Tibet, and now, they run the world from an underground city—they have people all over the world in tunnels, listening to everything above. Brian wishes that they could learn this interesting stuff in school. The Them decides to play a rousing game of Charles Fort and the Atlantisans versus the Ancient Masters of Tibet.
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Themes
Long ago, witch-finders used to be respected. Now, there’s no Witchfinder General—there’s only a Witchfinder Sergeant and a Witchfinder Private named Newton “Newt” Pulsifer. He was drawn to the Witchfinder Army by an ad in the Gazette and decided to call. A Madame Tracy answered and, after some confusion, called Mr. Shadwell to the phone. Shadwell asked how many nipples Newt has (two) and if he has scissors (yes). Satisfied with the answers, he hired Newt.
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Meanwhile, Aziraphale sits with a stack of notes. He never met Agnes; she was too bright. Usually, Heaven and Hell are able to identify the “prophetic types” and, if those people didn’t come up with their own way of ignoring their thoughts (like St. John with his mushrooms), they send static down on the same mental wavelength. Aziraphale finally gets up and phones his contact. Then, he calls Directory Enquiries and asks for all the Youngs in Tadfield and Lower Tadfield. Aziraphale dials the first number. A middle-aged voice answers with “Tadfield Six double-six.” Aziraphale hangs up, shaking.
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Newt sits with a pile of newspapers, thinking that he never would’ve joined the army had he known what it entailed. His job is to cut out newspaper articles that mention either witches or unexplainable phenomena. As Newt cuts another article, he hears a thump on the door. He lets Shadwell in, and Shadwell dumps his massive stack of newspapers. He snarls that his landlord, Mr. Rajit, practices voodoo—to Newt, this is crazy, since voodoo comes from the Caribbean and Rajit and his family are from Bangladesh. When Newt points this out, Shadwell says that once Newt is initiated properly, he’ll learn the secret truth: that the darkest voodoo comes from Bangladesh.
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Shadwell grandly tells Newt how he was recruited to the army: his cellmate was in prison for burning a coven, and he was dying. He passed on the knowledge to Shadwell, just as Shadwell is now passing the knowledge to Newt. The Witchfinder Army (WA) stands between the world and the darkness. When Newt asks about the churches’ role, Shadwell scoffs. The churches, he insists, are as bad as the witches—and they can’t stamp out evil if they want to stay in business.
When Newt first joined the WA, it didn’t take him long to realize that Shadwell is mentally unstable. The WA headquarters is filthy and run-down, but Newt sticks with it out of fascination, pity, and now affection for Shadwell—like most people, Newt likes Shadwell. The Rajits like him, since he seems to hate everyone. The next-door tenant, Madame Tracy, likes when Shadwell shouts that she’s the whore of Babylon, which she sees as free advertising. She always leaves Sunday dinner on his doorstep. Shadwell also hits the walls, which saves Madame Tracy from having to operate the table rapper during her séances.
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Newt pushes a pile of clippings toward Shadwell. They all mention unexplainable phenomena, but since disappearing nuclear reactors and the discovery of Atlantis don’t concern witches, Shadwell isn’t interested. Madame Tracy steps in to tell Shadwell that there’s someone on the phone, and Newt hears Shadwell assure the caller that he’ll put his best squad on the case. When Shadwell returns, cursing about a Southerner, Newt says that there’s a town that, strangely, has been having normal weather—and witches affect the weather. He offers to drive the 40 miles to Tadfield. Shadwell curses; his caller mentioned Tadfield. He tells Newt to stop in before he leaves to get his “armor o’ righteousness.”
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Just after Newt leaves, the phone rings again: it’s Crowley, giving Shadwell the same instructions that Aziraphale did. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale run the Witchfinder Army, but they both think that their side should support such endeavors. Technically, Shadwell doesn’t run the WA—a Witchfinder General Smith does. There are lots of other Witchfinder Smiths on Shadwell’s roster, since he doesn’t have much imagination. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale have read that far in the paperwork, so they pay Shadwell a combined 60 pounds per year, no questions asked.
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