“Welcome to the End Times!”
This entry is a translation of another entry in Portuguese, which was published on the 25th of December 2019 and can be accessed here!
[Spoilers]
Last entry, November 5th, 2023, at 2:40am
The Antichrist was born and the world will end three days after his eleventh birthday. Next Saturday, at teatime. And he will reign over the ruined Earth.
The short TV series Good Omens tells the story of an angel and a demon who become unlikely allies in a mission to stop the Antichrist, an eleven-year-old boy, from bringing about the end times. In the other corner of the ring are Heaven and Hell, both eagerly awaiting the coming of Armageddon and preparing to wage war on each other until the complete destruction of all creation. And in the middle is Anathema Device and the book of prophecies she inherited from her ancestor, Agnes Nutter - England's last witch and the only person ever to perfectly predict all the events leading up to the Apocalypse.
The TV series is based on the book 'Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter,' released in 1990 and written by the lovely British authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
I was delighted when I heard Neil Gaiman was going to be working on the TV adaptation of this book. Not only because I love this story, but also because I care deeply about both authors, whose books I've read since I was quite young, and whose stories played an important role in my formative years. I first heard of Neil Gaiman when my brother brought me 'Sandman.' (which has now been made into a Netflix Series!), and reading 'Sandman' was the first time I understood that all my favourite fantasy books could be in dialogue with the great literary classics. I immediately fell in love with Sandman and felt that I could love and appreciate both Gaiman and Shakespeare.
I was introduced to Terry Pratchett's work even earlier in my life. His books became so special to me that I couldn't help but cry at the news of his death in 2015.
About twenty years ago, I found the first five books in the Discoworld series in a second-hand bookshop while strolling through the Pan-Amazonian Book Fair with my mother. The colourful covers and witty drawings caught my attention, but it was what I found inside that forever shaped me. Pratchett's sarcastic and biting humour, capable of revealing the perversions of reality through the eyes of fantasy, taught me to read the invisible lines of arbitrary and unfair conventions, and to face even the worst moments of our lives with humour and prudence. In a way, he taught me to laugh at the absurd. I felt that Pratchett had become like a distant friend, writing letters of encouragement through his stories.
I hope to write posts about their books in the future. For now, let’s get back to the post about Good Omens, the TV series.
Both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are writers who explore the fantasy genre by subverting expectations of what reality usually is or should be. And so Good Omens, with much humour and irony, explores the invisible absurdity in the most mundane things, such as the inherent corruption a child is exposed to when raised in so much power and wealth. (No doubt, if Warlock had really been the Antichrist, he would have caused Armageddon).
Much in the authors' style, the TV series subverts what we hope (or fear) will happen in the End Times. To comment on the series, I have chosen three guiding questions to help me explore the unexpected, while also helping me to describe some of the events and themes throughout the six episodes of Good Omens.
1. What if the Antichrist were an ordinary child?
All the plans of Heaven and Hell for the coming of the end times are based on a single factor: that the Antichrist be born on earth and come into his power on his eleventh birthday, immediately after obtaining and naming his hellound. But through a combination of error, incompetence and pure chance, two babies will be exchanged in the nursery of the Chattering Order of St Beryl, run by Satanic nuns. And Satan's newborn will then be raised as a normal human child in idyllic Lower Tadfield, a small town in south-east England.
While all eyes are on Warlock Dowling (the supposed Antichrist, but really just a spoiled brat raised by an American ambassador living in London), the real Antichrist Adam Young, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast called Dragon, Prince of this world, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness, plays with his friends as the leader of the Them.
“Brian, Pepper, Adam Young and Wensleydale"
Warlock Dowling is brought up with plenty of wealth and a lack of boundaries, his personality warped under the pressure of such upbringing and the expectation of his future evil deeds. All the while, Adam Young lives a normal child's life, loving his parents, playing with his friends and his adorable Dog. Even as he accidentally discovers whole lost continents.
2. What if an Angel and a Demon worked together to stop Armageddom?
Aziraphale and Crowley are the heavenly and hellish agents sent to Earth to observe and influence humanity towards good and evil respectively. But now, the war between Heaven and Hell is upon us. At the dawn of the End Times, Angel and Demon become reluctant allies in a self-imposed mission to prevent the destruction of their home of the past six thousand years.
Voluntarily intoxicated with Châteauneuf-du-Pepe and horrified at the thought of spending eternity among their own kind, Angel and Demon decide to join forces to save all creatures, great and small. Along with liquor, bookshops, music, and all the human creations they have come to appreciate.
Crowley then proposes the perfect plan: he and Aziraphale should follow the life of the boy who they believe to be the Antichrist, and take every opportunity to influence him both for good and for evil. His plan assumes that their equal influence will cancel each other out, and in the end, the child of darkness will become just a normal child.
"If we do it right, he won't be evil," Crowley says. "Or good. He'll just be normal."
3. What if a Witch perfectly predicts the Apocalypse?
In a story full of angels and demons, the only person who really knows what is happening, or rather what will happen, is a witch about to die on an inquisitorial stake. Not only did Agnes Nutter predict the end times, but she also laid out the exact path her descendants should follow to avoid it.
And that's how the story comes to Anathema Device, who, in order to save humanity, must decide to give up all freedom and live exactly as her ancestor had predicted.
If we follow these three questions, we will find that Good Omens is told from three main perspectives. Adam's story, the adventures of Crowley and Aziraphale, and Anathema's mission. I am going to highlight two themes that run through all three of these storylines, and you can judge for yourself whether or not this is interesting.
Free Will
All three storylines can be interpreted in terms of Choice. That is, they dialogue with the theme of free will. In the tradition on which Good Omens is based, free will is the divine gift given to humanity, and it is said that no other creature is capable of self-determination as such, of exercising complete freedom of choice over its actions.
Angels and Demons are not supposed to have free will; the series portray them as incapable of disobeying the divine plan and role for which they were created. But Crowley and Aziraphale are different. Perhaps because they have coexisted with humanity for so long, they developed, besides a special taste for wine, books and other human inventions, also a capacity for choice. After all, they have had six thousand years to practise it since the first time they chose for themselves: the day Crowley, once called Crawly, of his own volition convinced Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit, and Aziraphale, once guardian of the East Gate of the Garden of Eden, feared for the safety of the original couple and chose to give up his flaming sword so that Adam could fight for their own safety after the expulsion.
“It'd be funny if we both got it wrong, eh?
If I did the good thing and you did the bad one."
On the other hand, Anathema Device, though human, chooses not to exercise freedom of choice when confronted with the Book of Prophecy. She becomes a 'device' as an 'instrument' of her ancestor's prophecy, whereas 'anathema' could mean something that is execrated, erased, extinguished, like a curse. (Interestingly, anathema as a technical term in Catholic doctrine means an excommunication, while its original ancient Greek meaning is "something put on" or "deposited over" and its use corresponded to the meaning of "an offering to the gods placed upon the altar"). The last descendant of Agnes Nutter is the instrument of the curse. Anathema must choose to be a device, she chooses not to have a choice because this is the only way to prevent Armageddon.
Anathema:
In Latin: one cursed by ecclesiastical authority.
In Ancient Greek: in the Old Testament, a creature or object set apart for sacrifice; older meaning: something offered to a deity.
Adam is at a crossroads between what he is and what he wants to be. He exists to bring about the End Times, but he refuses to do so. Raised as a normal boy among friends, he doesn't see himself as the Antichrist or the son of Satan. And that is what prevents Armageddon. Adam represents a journey of self-determination.
Determinism
On the other side of free will the is determinism. Determinism is the theory that everything that exists and happens is predetermined. The presence of a divine plan appears several times in Good Omens, and all the actors in the narrative, be they humans, angels, demons or even the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, seem to act according to it. But even though God is the series' narrator, she doesn't tell us what the plan is. So it's impossible to know what that plan had been, or whether it has been fulfilled as planned.
But is it really?
“I play an ineffable game of my own devising.
Which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."
The way events unfold in Good Omens may give us an explanation.
Let's start with the question: who really has any influence over the End Times? The angels and demons wanted Armageddon to come, not because of a personal choice, but because it was prophecised, because it was what they were made to do. And because it was foretold, it was what they believed to be the divine plan. But what was foretold didn't happen. Why not?
Perhaps because some characters chose otherwise. Not the hordes of Angels and Demons nor Heaven and Hell, not even God or Satan determined the events in Good Omens. The events were determined by the characters' free choices. The reason why the End did not come was that Aziraphale and Crowley chose to live on Earth, Adam chose who he wanted to be, Newton chose to believe in Anathema, and Anathema chose not to choose.
Anathema is a paradox. In order to do what she wants, she has to give up her freedom and carry out all the steps laid down by her great-great-great-great-grandmother. She exercises her free will by choosing every day to do nothing but what the Book of Prophecy says. Her story enlightens that choice is the vehicle of freedom, because it is possible to exercise choice even by not choosing. And at the heart of it all is Agnes Nutter.
Agnes Nutter's omniscience linked her to God. She who foresaw the future perfectly and then chose not to assume that the future was entirely determined by her vision. She did not assume that the End Times would happen just because they were predicted. Prediction does not presuppose fact. And perhaps everyone else had been following the divine plan designed by God, just as Anathema followed the plans described in the witch's predictions. The first is Determinism, the second is Free will.
It wasn't the act of foretelling in itself that made Agnes Nutter's predictions come true, but the choice to prevent something thus foretold from happening. It was the witch's choice to write a book telling her descendants exactly what to do. And their choice to follow the Book of Prophecy prevented the End. It is safe to say that the divine plan was not for Armageddon to happen as foretold. The divine plan was all along for the free choices of all involved to determine what would happen.
The ineffable card game laid down by God has its rules made explicit by Agnes Nutter. The divine plan is in fact determined by free will.
One question remains: Agnes Nutter foresaw the End Times, and through her predictions she worked out how to prevent them. Did Agnes' predictions help to avert the inevitable future, or did she foresee that the End Times wouldn't actually happen, since she knew all the events necessary to prevent it?
Paradoxes are fun.
TL:DR ~ Too Long: Didn't Read!
Angels and Demons who want the End Time are stopped by an angel and a demon who refuse to do as they are told.
It is better to spend a few lives on Earth than an eternity watching The Sound of Music.
You can be whoever you want to be, no matter what anyone says - even if you are the Antichrist.
Free Will is defined by the ability to choose. So is, apparently, determinism.
Good Omens is the reverse of Oedipus King.
Comments