Good Omens

by

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

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Good and Evil Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Good and Evil Theme Icon
Human Nature Theme Icon
Destiny vs. Free Will Theme Icon
Humor and Absurdity Theme Icon
Friendship  Theme Icon
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 Theme Icon

Good Omens follows the angel Aziraphale and his friend, the demon Crowley, as they receive news that Armageddon is coming: the armies of Heaven and Hell are preparing for a final fight. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley are happy about this, as both of them have enjoyed the thousands of years they’ve spent living on Earth. As Armageddon draws near (and Aziraphale and Crowley work together to stop it from happening), the divine characters in the book pay close attention to the relationship between good and evil. They are, as angels and demons, supposed to be fully on the side of either Heaven or Hell—and each of them is, in theory, only good or only evil. However, this is a false dichotomy, as all of the characters demonstrate both good and bad characteristics. Through this dynamic the novel suggests that everyone—whether human or divine—contains elements of both good and evil, and that the choices an individual makes are what matter most.

The very premise of Armageddon sets up the idea that good and evil are polar opposites, with no gray area in between. As Crowley reflects on Armageddon, he explains how it will proceed: it is “The Great War, the Last Battle. Heaven versus Hell, three rounds, one Fall, no submission.” This will result in the end of the world—and “endless Heaven or, depending on who won, endless Hell.” This makes it clear that, at least when it comes to the divine, there’s a divide between good and evil. Heaven is the realm of good, while Hell is the realm of evil. And therefore, depending on which side wins Armageddon, the world will be only good or only bad from that point on.

However, Aziraphale and Crowley’s conversations about Armageddon imply that when something (or someone) is exclusively good or bad it’s, at best, boring—and at worst, such polarity robs life of any meaning. Immediately after explaining what Armageddon would entail, Crowley can’t decide if he’d prefer Heaven or Hell to win. And, for that matter, he “remember[s] what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell.” This suggests that Heaven and Hell, good and evil, might not be all that different. As Crowley and Aziraphale brainstorm what to do about the world’s impending doom, they also discuss the idea that life would be boring and meaningless without the interplay between good and evil. This is in part because, over the last 6,000 years, Crowley and Aziraphale have regularly worked together in their respective professional roles as an earthbound demon and an earthbound angel. They’ve each allowed the other to carry out their work making the world either better or more hellish—and as a result, in their opinion, the world as it exists in the novel’s present is a wonderful mix of both good and evil. So, with this decided, Aziraphale and Crowley set out to work together to prevent Armageddon from happening and ensure that the world continues to function in this middle ground between good and evil.

Ultimately, the novel proposes that it’s impossible to tell whether someone is good or evil based on what they look like or where they come from—it’s better to judge them by their choices. This idea is best exemplified through the Antichrist, the son of Satan who is supposed to bring about Armageddon on his 11th birthday. The Antichrist is supposed to grow up as the son of the American Cultural Attaché and receive a Satanic upbringing that will prepare him to take control of the Earth soon after his 11th birthday—but the plan goes wrong from the start. The Satanic nuns tasked with switching the Antichrist with the American diplomat’s baby accidentally switch the Antichrist with the son of a normal Englishman. Thus, the Antichrist—Adam Young—grows up as a normal human in an idyllic rural English village. And though he heads up a gang of children that is the bane of the villagers’ existence, Adam loves his life, his home, his family and his friends. So, when the moment of Armageddon arrives and Adam becomes aware of his supernatural powers, he chooses to give them up, stop Armageddon, and leave his happy life the way it is instead of precipitating the end of the world and the final fight between Heaven and Hell. Adam’s character makes the case that good and evil are learned, not inherent; no one, not even the Antichrist, is entirely one or the other. This drives home the novel’s assertion that a person’s choices, rather than their birth, makes them good or evil. People, just like the world at large, are comprised of elements that can be seen as good or bad, depending on a person’s perspective—and this interplay between good and evil is what makes the world as rich and interesting as it is.

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Good and Evil Quotes in Good Omens

Below you will find the important quotes in Good Omens related to the theme of Good and Evil.
Eleven Years Ago Quotes

“I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime,” he said.

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

[...]

What could he tell them? That twenty thousand people got bloody furious? That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city? And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people? In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

And that’d be that. No more world. That’s what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending on who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.

Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.

But there was no getting out of it. You couldn’t be a demon and have free will.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, God
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Sister Mary Loquacious/Mary Hodges, God
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

And just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he’d said [...] was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley’s amazement.

“I’m pretty certain I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.

Aziraphale blushed.

“That was me,” he said. “I had always thought that your people invented them.”

“Did you? We thought they were yours.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bentley
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

“Don’t tell me from genetics. What’ve they got to do with it?” said Crowley. “Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.”

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Aziraphale, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Wednesday Quotes

“I’ll call him Dog,” said his master, positively. “It saves a lot of trouble, a name like that.”

The hell-hound paused. Deep in its diabolical canine brain it knew that something was wrong, but it was nothing if not obedient and its great sudden love of its master overcame all misgivings. Who was to say what size it should be, anyway?

It trotted down the slope to meet its destiny.

Strange, though. It had always wanted to jump up at people but, now, it realized that against all expectation it wanted to wag its tail at the same time.

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Agnes Nutter, Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Warlock, Satan
Page Number: 76-77
Explanation and Analysis:
Thursday Quotes

This wasn’t, insofar as the hell-hound had any expectations, what he had imagined life would be like in the last days before Armageddon, but despite himself, he was beginning to enjoy it.

[...]

Form shapes nature. There are certain ways of behavior appropriate to small scruffy dogs which are in fact welded into the genes. You can’t just become small-dog-shaped and hope to stay the same person; a certain intrinsic small-dogness begins to permeate your very Being.

He’d already chased a rat. It had been the most enjoyable experience of his life.

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 128
Explanation and Analysis:
Friday Quotes

“I thought the churches...” Newt began.

“Pah!” said Shadwell. [...] “Churches? What good did they ever do? They’m just as bad. Same line o’ business, nearly. You can’t trust them to stamp out the Evil One, ‘cos if they did, they’d be out o’ that line o’ business. If yer goin’ up against a tiger, ye don’t want fellow travelers whose idea of huntin’ is tae throw meat at it. Nay, lad. It’s up to us. Against the darkness.”

Related Characters: Newton “Newt” Pulsifer (speaker), Mr. Shadwell (speaker)
Page Number: 165
Explanation and Analysis:
Saturday Quotes

“Tye yt well,” she said to the astonished witchfinder. And then, as the villagers sidled toward the pyre, she raised her handsome head in the firelight and said, “Gather ye ryte close, goode people. Come close untyl the fire near scorch ye, for I charge ye that alle must see how thee last true wytch in England dies. For wytch I am, for soe I am judgéd, yette I knoe not what my true Cryme may be. And therefore let myne death be a messuage to the worlde. Gather ye ryte close, I saye, and marke well the fate of alle who meddle with such as theye do notte understande.”

And, apparently, she smiled and looked up at the sky over the village and added, “That goes for you as welle, yowe daft old foole.”

Related Characters: Agnes Nutter (speaker), Newton “Newt” Pulsifer, Mr. Shadwell, God
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:

“You don’t have to be so lit’ral about everything,” he said. “That’s the trouble these days. Grass materialism. ‘S people like you who go round choppin’ down rain forests and makin’ holes in the ozone layer. There’s a great big hole in the ozone layer ‘cos of grass materialism people like you.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:

1111. An the Great Hound sharl coom, and the Two Powers sharl watch in Vane, for it Goeth where is its Master, where they Wot Notte, and he sharl name it, True to Ittes Nature, and Hell sharl flee it.

Related Characters: Agnes Nutter (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Anathema Device, Newton “Newt” Pulsifer, Warlock
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

Dog slunk along with his tail between his legs, whining.

This wasn’t right, he was thinking. Just when I was getting the hang of rats. Just when I’d nearly sorted out that bloody German Shepherd across the road. Now He’s going to end it all and I’ll back with the ole glowin’ eyes and chasin’ lost souls. What’s the sense in that? They don’t fight back, and there’s no taste to ‘em...

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 211
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren’t deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors—doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operations of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren’t paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:

But, to look on the bright side, all this only went to prove that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Right now, across the country, people who would otherwise have been made just that little bit more tense and angry by being summoned from a nice bath, or having their names mispronounced at them, were instead feeling quite untroubled and at peace with the world. As a result of Hastur’s action a wave of low-grade goodness started to spread exponentially through the population, and millions of people who ultimately would have suffered minor bruises of the soul did not in fact do so. So that was all right.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

“What you’re all sayin’,” he summed up, [...] “is that it wouldn’t be any good at all if the Greasy Johnsonites beat the Them or the other way round?”

“That’s right,” said Pepper. [...] “Everyone needs a Greasy Johnson.”

“Yeah,” said Adam. “That’s what I thought. It’s no good anyone winning.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Pepper (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Wensleydale, Brian, Greasy Johnson
Page Number: 292
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’d just like to say,” he said, “if we don’t get out of this, that...I’ll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you.”

“That’s right,” said Crowley bitterly. “Make my day.”

Aziraphale held out his hand.

“Nice knowing you,” he said.

Crowley took it.

“Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And...Aziraphale?”

“Yes.”

“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:
Sunday Quotes

He couldn’t see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn’t. And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 369
Explanation and Analysis: