Clair J. Hutchings-Budd

cjhutchings-budd1@sheffield.ac.uk

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals (Genesis 2:19-20).[1]

In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel Good Omens, names act as important signifiers of role and function; the act of naming can be an expression of power so potent that it can literally change reality.[2] Here, I propose a reading of Good Omens that explores human agency through the process of naming. The plot of the novel revolves around the character Adam Young who—readers discover early in the story—is the Antichrist. However, Adam is also named and raised as human, and this is fundamental to how the boy perceives the world around him and, in so doing, transforms it. Although Good Omens is more frequently considered in terms of its engagement with the biblical book of Revelation, I argue that Pratchett and Gaiman’s novel has an equally significant relationship with Genesis. Adam Young’s characterisation as “human incarnate”[3] draws upon the moment in the creation story when God delegates the responsibility of naming the animals to Adam, the first person. In the biblical text, naming thus becomes a fundamentally human act. This is a theme that Good Omens goes on to develop through the character of Adam Young, who uses naming to assert his own human identity at the same time as he rejects his supernatural destiny as the Antichrist. In Genesis 2:19, God “brought [the animals] to the man to see what he would call them.” This implied moment of uncertainty—does God already know what Adam will do or is he standing back expectantly to see what will happen?—is the speculative space within which Good Omens operates. The character of Adam Young in Good Omens, like the Adam of Genesis, exercises his humanity by naming, but we can also read the act of naming as an act of human creation that transforms the world.

As a novel that engages with the cultural inheritance of the Bible, Good Omens does so mostly indirectly, via a range of literary and cinematic intertexts.[4] These are primarily Richard Donner’s 1976 film The Omen and John Milton’s reimagining of Genesis in his 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, which are referenced frequently and form the literary “architecture” for the versions of Heaven and Hell contained in Pratchett and Gaiman’s novel. I also consider Good Omens’ roots in the short story “William the Antichrist,” Neil Gaiman’s parody of Richmal Crompton’s Just William series (1922–70). Good Omens’ engagement of Crompton’s stories as cultural touchstones positions Adam Young as a literary construct who shapes his world out of material drawn from his own mental library. As the Antichrist Adam Young has supernatural powers that can shape the world, but because the boy thinks of himself in human terms it is a human lexicography that he accesses when he defines his friends, family, pet and home.

When Good Omens first introduces us to Adam Young, he is growing up in the rural idyll of Tadfield believing himself to be an ordinary human child. As is revealed, Adam is no such thing. He is actually the Antichrist, planted on earth by the demon Crowley on the instructions of his underworld masters to bring about Armageddon and the final showdown between Heaven and Hell. Heaven seems to bear the appearance of the Antichrist with equanimity, believing it to be the fulfilment of biblical prophecy.[5] This is not a view shared by the angel Aziraphale, who has been having misgivings about God’s purpose for humanity ever since the Fall. Crowley, as a demon “who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards”[6] is similarly discomfited about why it seems necessary to bring about the end of the world. Aziraphale and Crowley have been tinkering with the affairs of humankind since the expulsion of the first humans from the garden of Eden[7], and over the millennia[8] both angel and demon have become more aligned to the ways of people than with their superiors in the demonic and heavenly realms. They decide to join forces to try to halt the apocalypse by cancelling out each other’s influence on the upbringing of the infernal child.[9] There is only one problem—they have the wrong boy. 

As signalled by the title of Pratchett and Gaiman’s collaboration, the novel parodies a film that was very much part of the popular cultural landscape of its original readership: Richard Donner’s 1976 horror film The Omen.[10] In the film American diplomat Robert Thorn is informed that his son is stillborn and is persuaded by the chaplain of the hospital where his wife has given birth to substitute another infant for the dead baby. Thorn is informed that this second child’s mother had died at the same time his own son was stillborn. Thorn never tells his wife what he has done, and the couple raise the child Damien as their own. However, it is not long before Damien is centred in a series of horrific incidents, including the public suicide of his nanny during his fifth birthday party. It is revealed that Thorn’s biological son was murdered by satanists shortly after his birth, and that Damien is the Antichrist.[11] In Good Omens the means of contriving the presence of the Antichrist on Earth involves no murders. It too is achieved using the narrative device of switching babies in a maternity ward, but here the exchange is bungled by scatter-brained satanic nun Sister Mary Loquacious of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, after a third child enters the equation.[12] The upshot is that the Antichrist ends up being raised unwittingly by the Youngs, an ordinary English suburban couple. The premise of Pratchett and Gaiman’s novel is therefore established: “If the baby swap had just been a little bit messier, and the kid gone off somewhere else, he would have grown up as somebody else.”[13]

Anthropomorphic personifications

The relationship between a character’s name, identity, and purpose is a theme that runs throughout Pratchett and Gaiman’s fiction, which is liberally populated with entities that are embodied representations of what people believe. These include gods,[14] but also abstract concepts like Time[15] and mythical figures such as Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy.[16] Gaiman’s seven Endless in his Sandman comics[17] are characters whose names simultaneously reflect and determine their function: Death, Desire, Destiny, Delight, Dream/Delirium, Destruction and Despair are human concepts in material form. They are liminal beings who exist on the border between the supernatural and real world. The Endless have personalities and interact freely with humans, but ultimately, should people stop believing in them, will cease to exist (physically, at least). The anthropomorphic personification of Death in Pratchett’s long running Discworld series (1983–2015) is another such example.[18] The character also appears in Good Omens in the role of one of the four horsepersons of the Apocalypse, after the entities depicted in Revelation 6:1–7. For Pratchett and Gaiman, anthropomorphic personifications are first and foremost human concepts in material form and consequently they act in very human ways, including holding the capacity for growth and change.

In Sandman, for instance, the personification of Delight transforms into Delirium[19] after suffering personal trauma; so, in Good Omens the horsepersons now feature Pollution who has replaced the personification of Pestilence. We are informed that Pestilence, “muttering about penicillin, had retired in 1936”.[20] When War, Pollution and Famine[21] are vanquished at the end of Good Omens, Death informs Adam’s friend Wensleydale that, as projections of the human psyche, the horsepersons have returned to “WHERE THEY BELONG … WHERE THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN, BACK IN THE MINDS OF MAN”.[22] A comic subplot involving four alternative Bikers of the Apocalypse squabbling over which irritants of modern life they should represent[23] (including Grievous Bodily Harm, Really Cool People, and Cruelty to Animals) serves, however farcically, to underpin this core message of the novel, which is that as long as humanity can conceive of, and enact, horrors, it also has the freedom to imagine and choose alternatives.[24]As we shall come to see, it is Adam Young’s naming his friends Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian as human counterparts to the horsepersons that cause the apocalyptic entities to be beaten in battle. What follows, when the boy names Mr Young as his father and thus rejects his supernatural origins, causes the amassed forces of Heaven and Hell to dissipate and sets the course of human history on a new path.

We should also note, however, that the Bikers’ abortive attempt to emulate the four horsepersons highlights a critical technical point about how naming works in Pratchett and Gaiman’s worldbuilding. The personifications of Death, Famine, Pestilence/Pollution and War have potency because they are universal concepts that transcend cultural and historical boundaries. Cruelty to Animals and GBH are really only subcategories of the human capacity for violence (War has that one sewn up), whereas Really Cool People is more likely to attract derision than wonder, veneration or dread. This principle is not just confined to Good Omens. In Pratchett’s Hogfather, the abduction of the Hogfather (the Discworld equivalent to Father Christmas) leads to a surfeit of belief that gives rise to a plethora of niche supernatural entities; thus, the wizards of Unseen University are disconcerted to find they have somehow conjured into being the Eater of Socks and the Stealer of Pencils. However, as Archchancellor Ridcully points out, there is no use in the Dean’s trying to call forth a goblin to bring him huge bags of money because: “firstly, you’ve never mysteriously received huge bags of money and needed to find a hypothesis to explain them, and secondly, no one else would think it at all likely.”[25] There is an underlying logic to the attributing of lost things to the actions of an Eater of Socks and Stealer of Pencils, but unfortunately no amount of wishful thinking will ever give rise to a goblin of riches. In Pratchett and Gaiman’s fiction it is not every act of naming, then, that gives rise to an anthropomorphic personification, but only the names that humans give to concepts that are both widely understood and evoke a tangible and sustainable emotional response: it will never not be annoying to find that one sock left unpaired at the bottom of the laundry basket.

Adam Young as cultural construct

Pratchett and Gaiman’s version of the Antichrist is not an anthropomorphic personification but is a different order of being who has both a human and occult aspect to his nature. The plot of Good Omens is driven by the pull that is exerted on Adam Young by these opposing inner selves, and the boy’s eventual assertion of his human identity, which is how he overcomes the horsepersons and averts the Apocalypse. I will return to Adam’s fight with the horsepersons, but we should first spend some time unpacking how Adam receives his name and how this acts as a textual signifier of his humanity.

Sister Mary Loquacious’s suggestion of Damien[26] as a possible first name for Mr Young’s “son” should be read not just as a comedic nod to Good Omens’ cinematic source material, but in the context of Pratchett and Gaiman’s interest in names as signifiers. After the names Damien and Wormwood are rejected by Mr Young, the irony of Sister Mary’s suggestion of Adam as a “safe” [27] option should not be lost on the reader. The narrative of Good Omens opens in the immediate aftermath of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, after God had discovered that they had disobeyed His prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The details of this story as related in Genesis 2:17, Genesis 3:1–19, and reimagined by John Milton in Paradise Lost, frames Pratchett and Gaiman’s novel. The biblical account and Milton’s poetic elaboration of “man’s first disobedience”[28] are sufficiently embedded in the popular consciousness to remind readers that “Adam” is a culturally loaded name. If the first Adam was defined by an act of disobedience, it might be anticipated that his namesake may also rebel in some way. Good Omens thus invites us to consider the implications of the naming of Adam Young in the context of the biblical Adam’s afterlife in the creative imagination, and how this cultural resonance imparts additional layers of meaning to the boy’s characterisation. 

Approaching Good Omens as a novel that is in conversation with its intertexts, we see intersections with themes in literature and popular culture that include the tension between prophecy and what it means to exercise free will. Pratchett and Gaiman’s use of cinematic call-backs includes the overt parody of The Omen, as well as parallels with Monty Python’s Life of Brian.[29] While Python’s Brian is erroneously named as the prophesied Messiah, Good Omens makes use of a similar “mistaken at birth” trope to conceal the real Antichrist from view while Aziraphale and Crowley waste their time and attentions on the wrong child. Unlike Damien Thorn, whose identity and location is known to the satanists whose aim is to ensure the child understands and fulfils his diabolical destiny, Adam—named by Mr Young, who thinks he is the boy’s biological father—grows up without supernatural influences, believing himself to be wholly human. This connection between Adam’s naming, raising, and identifying as human is key to our understanding of why he rejects the supernatural imperative to initiate Armageddon.

Adam Young and his gang the Them originated in a short story by Gaiman called “William the Antichrist,” which reimagined the Antichrist as if he were the William Brown of Richmal Crompton’s Just William series.[30]Although Gaiman wrote that Good Omens “rapidly outgrew that conceit and became about a number of other things instead,”[31] his initial premise that if the Antichrist had “gone off somewhere else, he would have grown up as somebody else” hinges on whether nature or nurture is more important in shaping identity:

“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 …. 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.”[32]

Aziraphale and Crowley clearly believe that the Antichrist’s upbringing is much more significant than his nature. Working to an unspoken agreement that the pair have over the preceding six thousand years come to think of as “the Arrangement,” which comprises “tacit non-interference in each other’s activities”[33] they decide that the best means of averting the apocalypse is to neutralise the heavenly and demonic influences on the child. Unlike Damien Thorn’s nanny and, later, his governess, who are controlled solely by the forces of Hell, in Good Omens angelAziraphale and demon Crowley both have a hand in the education of Warlock, the child they believe to be the Antichrist. Warlock is the presumed son of the American cultural attaché whose mother (proving to be more susceptible to Sister Mary’s naming suggestions than Mr Young) gave birth in the room adjoining Mrs Young.[34] Warlock’s education is depicted in a series of comic vignettes where Crowley’s chilling Nanny Ashtoreth, and Aziraphale’s gentle gardener Brother Francis[35] give the child conflicting moral lessons, resulting in a “no-score win,” where “Nanny Ashtoreth bought the child a little tricycle, but could never persuade him to ride it inside the house. And he was scared of Rover.”[36]

The twist here, of course, is that the child Aziraphale and Crowley are working on is not the Antichrist at all. There can only be one Antichrist, although for the first eleven years of his life Adam Young has grown up completely out of sight of either Heaven or Hell and the only influences upon him have been human ones. As a “human incarnate” who was “left alone,”[37] Adam Young’s naming after the first human in the Bible[38] marks him as a creature of unknown potential, standing in contrast to the character of Damien Thorn in The Omen, whose future role in the destruction of humankind is predetermined. However, Crowley’s realisation that Adam has become human incarnate does not preclude the boy also being the Antichrist. Just as no amount of ethereal or occult instruction can make Warlock anything other than an ordinary (if rather privileged) boy, so Adam cannot help but exert his supernatural abilities. The use to which Adam Young puts these abilities, however, turns out to be as much an expression of his humanity as the fact of his occult origins.

The naming of Dog

As angel and demon come to the realisation that they have been focusing their attentions on the wrong child, Crowley tells Aziraphale that the Antichrist should be making his presence known “by trying to warp the world around him to his own desires, shaping it in his own image.”[39] Crowley here uses similar wording to that of Genesis 1:26, where God says “let us make humansin our image, according to our likeness.” God’s pronouncement in Genesis can be understood in many ways. “Our image” and “likeness” can be taken literally to mean that humans are physically or anatomically like God. Conversely, the words can be read metaphorically, where people are viewed as resembling God in conceptual ways, including in a spiritual, linguistic, intellectual, or ethical sense. Crowley’s evocation of the language of Genesis thus demands that we consider what is meant by the word “image” when it is applied to Pratchett and Gaiman’s version of the Antichrist.

Although the Antichrist can “warp” the world, and “shape” it from pre-existing material, unlike God, who “created the heavens and the earth” [from] “a formless void” (Gen 1:1), he cannot bring forth something from nothing. This point is stressed later in the novel when, as Adam becomes more attuned to his supernatural aspect, we learn that the animated bodies he proposes conjuring up for his friends to play with will only be a simulacrum of humans that are “good enough for armies”[40] but—critically—will not be the real thing. Pratchett and Gaiman’s Antichrist has demiurgic power, but it is not in the same order as that described in the biblical creation story, despite Crowley’s making the narrative association. The demon’s misunderstanding of who the Antichrist is and what he can accomplish through naming is a critical one, because it is based on Hell’s interpretation of Revelation and the role of the Antichrist in bringing about the end of the world (and here, Hell’s interpretation is the same as what the satanists of The Omen believe Revelation to mean[41]). What Crowley has not considered (because he still does not know the identity of the Antichrist) is the effect that Adam’s human upbringing has had on the child’s mental image of the world and thus the use to which the Antichrist will put his supernatural powers.

The first demonstration of what this means in practice occurs when Hell releases a hound to mark the Antichrist’s eleventh birthday. While Crowley and Aziraphale are loitering at Warlock’s birthday party awaiting its arrival, Crowley explains: “He’s supposed to name it himself. It’s very important that he names it himself. It gives it its purpose.… It’ll be Killer, or Terror, or Stalks-by-Night, I expect.”[42] Meanwhile, the beast is making its way to Tadfield, where Adam Young (completely unaware of his transformative powers) superimposes a human image of his ideal canine companion over that of the form occupied by the demonic familiar:

“I’m going to get a dog,” said his Master’s voice, firmly. His Master had his back to him; the hound couldn’t quite make out his features. 

“Oh, yeah, one of those great big Rottenweilers, yeah?” said the girl, with withering sarcasm.

“No, it’s going to be the kind of dog you can have fun with,” said his Master’s voice. “Not a big dog—”

—the eye in the nettles vanished abruptly downwards— 

“—but one of those dogs that’s brilliantly intelligent and can go down rabbit holes and has one funny ear that always looks inside out. And a proper mongrel, too. A pedigree mongrel.” 

Unheard by those within, there was a tiny clap of thunder on the lip of the quarry. It might have been caused by the sudden rushing of air into the vacuum caused by a very large dog becoming, for example, a small dog.

The tiny popping noise that followed might have been caused by one ear turning itself inside out.

“And I’ll call him …” said his Master’s voice. “I’ll call him…”

“Yes?” said the girl. “What’re you goin’ to call it?”

The hound waited. This was the moment. The Naming. This would give it its purpose, its function, its identity. Its eyes glowed a dull red, even though they were a lot closer to the ground, and it dribbled into the nettles.

“I’ll call him Dog,” said his master, positively. “It saves a lot of trouble, a name like that.”[43]

Adam’s repetition of “I’m going to,” “It’s going to” and the thrice repeated “I’ll call him” recalls God’s “Let there be,” “Let there” and “Let us” in Genesis 1:1-26, where each divine utterance initiates a new act of creation. Although Adam is only altering the form of the hellhound, rather than creating substance out of nothing (as God does in Genesis), the boy’s shaping of Dog also takes this iterative approach. Each desired-for canine feature that the boy describes (size; intelligence; turned-out ear; pedigree mongrel) causes a commensurate change in the beast until Dog finally assumes the shape that Adam has in his head.

Recalling Neil Gaiman’s account of Good Omens’ own genesis in his short story “William the Antichrist,” we can see that Adam’s mental picture of Dog is constructed from the boy’s reading of William Brown’s first meeting with the stray, Jumble, in Compton’s William the Outlaw.[44] Now transformed into a version of Jumble, Dog follows the convention in Pratchett and Gaiman’s writing that “Form shapes nature. There are certain ways of behaviour 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 small-dogness begins to permeate your very Being.”[45] This idea of the interlocked relationship between form and nature recalls Phyllis Trible’s assertion that: “Form and content are inseparable …. How the text speaks and what it says belong together in the discovery of what it is. To convey content is to employ form; to convey form is to employ content.”[46] Trible’s specific argument here relates to her analysis of the Bible as a literary text, but it also has a clear applicability to how naming works in Pratchett and Gaiman’s writing. Using Trible’s language, Dog’s form (his physicality, changed from supernatural beast to domesticated pet) cannot now be separated from his nature, or content (his canine personality and behaviour): “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.”[47]

The same holds true for Adam’s “small-boyness” (his human form) rather than his occult nature (his supernatural origins) which comes to influence how he views and engages with the world. It is significant therefore, that instead of giving the hound a name that indicates a satanic purpose, Adam calls it “Dog.” As a callback to how Mr Young thought that the name Adam would be a safe option, the eleven-year-old boy thinks that naming his pet Dog will save “a lot of trouble.” In fact, these attempts at neutrality by father and son both serve ultimately to reposition Adam Young as human. Genesis 2:19-20 relates that God “brought them [the animals] to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” As noted, the biblical concept of being created in the image of God has been interpreted in different ways, but in “Naming the Human Animal,” Arthur Walker-Jones takes the less frequently considered position that: “a relationship with other species [is] integral to human nature and the image of God.”[48] Viewed in this light, Adam Young’s naming of Dog in Good Omens acts not only as a plot twist—that the boy’s human upbringing has influenced the form he imposes on Dog—but allows us to consider the deeper, more profound implications of Adam Young’s human aspect.

As previously discussed, the Antichrist of Good Omens is simultaneously human and occult. Taking advantage of the scant and ambiguous references to the Antichrist in the Bible[49] Pratchett and Gaiman exploit this Antichrist-shaped conceptual space to allow their version of the character (heavily based on Damien Thorn) to define his own identity. That the Antichrist has a human dimension is pivotal to Pratchett and Gaiman’s construction of the character. Engaging the same questions of free-will and predestination that John Milton grappled with in his epic poem Paradise Lost,[50] this includes venturing in Good Omens whether Adam Young’s refusal to initiate Armageddon may itself have been divinely preordained, and if so, the paradoxical role that human free will plays in bringing about God’s intentions. 

Throughout Good Omens Aziraphale and Crowley refer frequently to God’s “Ineffable Plan.”[51] This is the presumption that there is an unknowable, deeper template to God’s design for His creation. After Adam Young has halted Armageddon, Crowley reflects that: “You can never be certain about what’s intended. Plans within plans.”[52] Walker-Jones’ thesis that “By asking the human to name the animals, God is asking the human to exercise a distinctively human trait”[53] can thus be read across to the implicit argument of Good Omens. If God’s ultimate (ineffable) plan is that Armageddon can be averted, Adam Young’s assertion of his human agency is not only congruent with God’s image for humanity, but an essential component of it.  Crowley’s observation that “upbringing is everything” is thus incomplete. Adam’s naming of Dog has two interlocked components. Not only is he the product of his human upbringing when he imposes his own, human, image onto the animal, but by naming Dog, Adam Young is (using Walker-Jones’ language) “exercise[ing] a distinctively human trait.” In following the precedent set by the first Adam in Genesis, Adam Young is also laying claim to his human birthright.

Reconstructing Eden

It becomes clear that the parallels between Adam’s naming of the animals in Genesis and Adam Young’s naming of Dog in Good Omens go beyond the narratively superficial. At this juncture it is useful to explore the distinction between signifiers of general categories, and signifiers of specificity and how they operate in Good Omens’ engagement of the biblical text. Patrick McArdle writes that “we only need names or signifiers … when there are two things of the same kind. That is, names only have meaning, only make sense, in the context of community.”[54] The Adam of Genesis was employed by God to name animals by defining their general categories; to use modern scientific terms, from the category level upwards to kingdom, and downwards to the level of species. There is no mention in Genesis of Adam’s attributing names to individuals within species until after Adam has named all the animal species and failed to find amongst them a “helper as his partner” (Gen 2:20). God then creates a second, female, human to whom Adam assigns the category name “Woman” (Gen 2:23). McCardle writes that when Adam names his female companion Woman:

He both recognises the essential openness to this other, and invites the exploratory development of the relationship …. The transformation at Gen 3:20 where the man is now able to ‘call’ the woman ‘Eve,’ can be read not only as the dramatic alteration in the nature of their relationship due to sin, but also as the development of their relationship based on their experience of each other.[55]

It is this type of openness and recognition of potentiality that is also reflected in Adam Young’s naming of Dog. Although the boy describes a highly particularised, specific type of dog, the name he assigns to it—Dog—represents the idealised individual that the boy has yet to meet, circling back to a general category of the best of all possible dogs. This includes Crompton’s Jumble but also recalls other fictional dogs like Timmy in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series[56] and Dennis the Menace’s sidekick Gnasher in The Beano,[57] amongst many other child/dog partnerships in books, comics, films and television. However, this is not the only idealised transformation that Adam Young brings about.

Genesis describes how God “planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). Unlike the first human who was set down in Eden by God, Adam Young has ended up in the village of Tadfield by accident, but from the moment of his arrival he has unconsciously begun to reshape Tadfield and its environs into his own personal paradise.[58] The fact that Tadfield is not like other places is first pointed out by Witchfinder Private Newt Pulsifer to Sergeant Shadwell:

“Well, there’s this little town which has been having some amazing weather for the last few years …. When do you remember normal weather for the time of year? … Normal weather for the time of year isn’t normal, Sergeant. It has snow at Christmas. When did you last see snow at Christmas? And long hot Augusts? Every year? And crisp autumns? The kind of weather you used to dream of as a kid? It never rained on November the Fifth and always snowed on Christmas Eve?”[59]

Tadfield’s weather that is always perfect for the time of year makes Newt suspicious, but it is only when he meets Anathema Device and they compare notes that they begin to realise exactly what it is that makes the place so unusual: “It was as if a large part of the twentieth century had marked a few square miles Out of Bounds.”[60] Although Anathema does not realise that it is Adam who is effecting these changes, she also identifies the anachronistic nature of the village, telling Newt that: “You should see the local kids. They’re unreal! Right out of the Boy’s Own Paper! All scabby knees and “brilliant!” and bullseyes.”[61]  Like Dog, Adam’s idealised version of the world has been modelled on the fiction he consumes, which in the case of the Just William stories and the Boy’s Own Paper[62] date back to more than two generations before Adam came into the world.

Adam’s marking Tadfield as “Out of Bounds” invites a comparison with the expulsion of the first humans from Eden in Genesis 3:23–24. In the biblical text, Adam and Eve’s access to Eden was controlled by God. Having disobeyed His prohibitions against eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, He sent them out into the world and set the cherubim and a flaming sword as guard on the gate to ensure they could not return. In Good Omens, Adam Young’s defining the parameters of the critical “few square miles” of Tadfield has the effect of his naming what lies within that boundary as his to shape and control, and according to his own, human design. Initially this is an instinctive, unconscious act, but as the novel builds towards its climax, and as Adam realises that as the Antichrist he has the power to carve up the world and dispense it as he wishes, he reinforces the point that Tadfield belongs to him:

“We could all have a quarter of the world each. Like you —” he pointed to Pepper, who recoiled as though Adam’s finger were a white-hot poker, “could have Russia because it’s red, and you’ve got red hair, right?” And Wensley can have America, and Brian can have, can have Africa and Europe, an’, an’ —”[63]

“What bit’s yours, Adam?” said Pepper.
Adam stared at her. Dog had stopped howling and had fixed his master with an intent, thoughtful mongrel stare.
“M-me?’ he said …. “But I’ll have Tadfield,” said Adam.
They stared at him.
“An’, an’ Lower Tadfield, and Norton, and Norton Woods —”
They still stared.
Adam’s gaze dragged itself across their faces.
“They’re all I’ve ever wanted,’ he said.”[64]

As well as emphasising that as the Antichrist, Adam Young has the power to take control of the world, this passage is also critically important because it is here that Adam defines the limits of his dominions. He has no interest in world domination because all he has ever wanted is the paradise he has created for himself. This is the moment that Adam Young rejects his supernatural destiny in favour of a more human aspiration: to name and create for himself a place that he can call home.

Naming through community

Recalling McArdle’s point that names derive their meaning through community interactions, I would now like to turn to how Adam Young defines his human identity in terms of his relationships with other people. As a Christian theological anthropologist, McArdle argues that for the writers of the Bible “the complexity of interpersonal relations is expressed in the exchange and interchange of names.”[65] In Good Omens Adam Young frequently experiments with new names for his group of friends, prompted by what he last read or watched, but these names never tend to stick. We are informed that despite his best efforts, “Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they [the children] did too.”[66] Like the would-be Bikers of the Apocalypse who struggle to find viable alternatives to War, Famine, Death and Pollution, or the Dean of Unseen University who in Pratchett’s Hogfather tries to call into being a goblin who brings him sacks of cash, the naming of the Them is not an act that occurs in isolation. In Good Omens, and frequently elsewhere in Pratchett and Gaiman’s fiction, names that represent ideas or concepts need to be validated through a process of community consensus. In this instance, there seems to be an unspoken agreement that “Them” is the name that best represents the type of low-level mischief the people of Tadfield have come to associate with the children. In the end, that is also how Adam, Pepper, Brian and Wensleydale come to define themselves. 

The Alternative Bikers’ attempt to ride out with the four horsepersons is short lived—literally for three of them, when they are killed in a motorway pile-up.[67] The horsepersons are riding out to meet with the Antichrist for the final battle between the assembled forces of Heaven and Hell. When they rendezvous at Tadfield air base they are confronted by the Them who Adam has redefined as counterparts to each of the riders: Pepper as War, Wensleydale as Famine and Brian as Pollution.[68] Pitching his friends one by one against each of the horsepersons in turn, the Them, led by Adam, overcome the anthropomorphic personifications and send them back into the minds of humans. The ease of the conquest of the riders by the Them is possible because of the universality of the concepts of War, Famine, Death and Pollution. In rejecting the role of Antichrist and the leadership of the horsepersons, Adam has effectively redesignated his friends in these roles so that the Them assume the official horsepersons’ power, but for that to happen the human Them need to have a common understanding of the meaning of the horsepersons’ names. Because the horsepersons have emerged from the minds of humans, they can be sent back there by human children wielding only the most symbolic of weapons. Consequently, War is defeated by a wooden sword, Famine with a set of scales made of grass and twigs, and Pollution by a twisted circlet of grass stalks.[69]

Once Adam and the Them have defeated the horsepersons, the scene is set for the boy’s final act of naming. Having averted the Apocalypse, Hell is enraged, and earth begins to crack in anticipation of the appearance of Adam’s supernatural father, Satan himself. The text informs us that Adam “moved one hand around in a blurred half circle”[70], following which instead of Satan, Mr Young appears. Unlike the naming of Dog and the construction of a second Eden in Tadfield, Adam’s summoning Mr Young is an entirely conscious, elective act. Adam knows that he is the Antichrist (and potentially always will be), but in naming Mr Young as his father he makes the choice to live as a human. In the context of McArdle’s thesis—that relationships between people are expressed in the interchange of names—the moment where Adam names Mr Young as his father connects us back to the maternity ward eleven years earlier, when Mr Young gave Adam his own name. 

Being human

In this article I have argued that naming in Good Omens is the means by which humanity asserts its agency. Pratchett and Gaiman bring into their literary collaboration ideas which they had already developed in their independent fiction about human belief giving rise to the existence of anthropomorphic personifications who are named for what they are. The authors’ version of the Antichrist is not an anthropomorphic personification, but as a being who has both a human and supernatural aspect to his identity Adam Young names his human friends as counterparts to the personifications of the horsepersons of the apocalypse. The Them defeat the horsepersons and thus avert Armageddon. Adam cements this victory and fixes his human nature by naming Mr Young (the man who has brought him up) and not Satan (the ruler of Hell who he has never met) as his father. 

In the eleven years that led up to this denouement, Adam has exerted an unconscious force on the world. He has transformed Tadfield into a personal Eden, naming it as his own and marking it “out of bounds” to the intrusions of the late twentieth century. His naming of Dog marks a pivotal moment in the boy’s coming into his human inheritance. Drawing upon Trible’s biblical criticism, I have highlighted the applicability of her thesis to what Pratchett and Gaiman have to say about the interlocked nature of form and content, arguing that Dog’s origins in Adam Young’s reading material supports our reading Dog as a “text.” When considering the naming of Dog, I have also used Walker-Jones’s work on Genesis 2:19–20 to explore how in following the precedent of the first Adam in Genesis, Adam Young is exercising a uniquely human trait and, in that sense, is laying claim to his human birthright. Finally, I have turned to McArdle’s analysis of naming in the Bible, in which, he argues, interpersonal relationships derive their meaning from the exchanging of names. As a Christian theological anthropologist, McArdle extrapolates this to human society more generally. Following these insights, I have drawn parallels in Good Omens between Adam Young’s relationships with his human friends the Them, and his naming Mr Young as his father.

Good Omens describes Adam Young as a boy “perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.”[71] This is a reference to the child’s potential: he is neither wholly good, nor is he wholly evil. I have argued that another way of looking at Adam is that he is simultaneously human and the Antichrist, and that the power he draws from both aspects is enacted through naming. Because Adam Young has free will, he has the choice of taking possession of the whole world and then destroying it, but in naming himself as human he uses his power as Antichrist to act against prophecy and save the world from destruction. These two dimensions to Adam’s identity are not necessarily oppositional ones. In rejecting his destiny as Antichrist, Adam does not change the fact of his origins, but in naming himself as human he can draw upon his supernatural powers to redirect the course of human history.

Works Cited

Blyton, Enid. Five on a Treasure Island. London: Hodder, 2017.

Compton, Richmal. William the Outlaw. London: Macmillan, 2022.

Gaiman, Neil. American Gods. London: Review, 2005.

________, Sandman: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: DC Comics, 2020.

________, Sandman: The Dream Hunters. New York: Vertigo, 2019.

________, Sandman: Overture. New York: Vertigo, 2019.

________, Sandman: Endless Nights. New York: Vertigo, 2019.

“In The Beginning,” Good Omens, Season 1, Episode 1. Directed by Douglas McKinnon. Written by Neil Gaiman. 31 May 2019, on Amazon Prime.

Just William…and Richmal. Produced by Caroline Raphael. Dora Productions for BBC Radio 4, 1 May 2022, on Radio 4.

Lindsey, Hal. The Late Great Planet Earth. New York: Bantam, 1973.

McArdle, Patrick. “Called by name: Contemporary Christian Anthropology,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 58.4 (2005), 219-23. doi:10.1017/S0036930605001018.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. London: Penguin Classics, 2000.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Directed by Terry Jones. Written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. 1979, Cinema International Corporation.

“Three Men, a Woman and a Baby.” Only Fools and Horses, Season 7, Episode 6. Directed by Tony Dow. Written by John Sullivan. 1 February 1991, on BBC1.

Pratchett, Terry. Hogfather. London: Victor Gallancz, 1996.

________, Small Gods. London: Corgi, 1993.

________, Thief of Time. London: Doubleday, 2001.

Pratchett, Terry and Gaiman, Neil. The Illustrated Good Omens. London: Gollancz, 2019.

The Omen. Directed by Richard Donner. Written by David Selzer. 1976, 20th Century Fox.

Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.

Walker-Jones, Arthur. “Naming the Human Animal: Genesis 1-3 and other animals in human becoming,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 52.4 (2017), 1005-28. doi:10.1111/zygo.12375.

[1] Translations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version.

[2] Good Omens is a work of significant cultural and literary impact created by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. At the time of this article’s publication, Neil Gaiman faces numerous allegations of sexual assault (https://tinyurl.com/3nhfmvbe). The decision to engage critically with this text should not be construed as an endorsement of the author, nor does it seek to minimise or excuse these serious accusations.

[3] Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, The Illustrated Good Omens (London: Victor Gollancz, 2019), 345.

[4] I will not be covering in any detail the 2019 Amazon TV adaptation of Good Omens written by Neil Gaiman following Pratchett’s death in 2015, or its 2023 screen sequel Good Omens 2, co-written with John Finnemore. The television adaptations (along with the anticipated Good Omens 3) merit a separate paper that I plan to write which explores the novel’s afterlife, influence on the speculative fiction genre, and reception and reinterpretation by a new generation of readers.

[5] Good Omens, 43–4.

[6] Good Omens, 9.

[7] Crowley, originally named Crawly (Good Omens, 5), had taken the form of the snake who tempted the first woman in Genesis 3:1–6, whilst in the novel Aziraphale is given the role of the cherubim placed to guard the eastern gate of Eden (Good Omens, 6), as described in Genesis 3:24.

[8] One of the novel’s conceits is that the Bible, and with it, Archbishop James Ussher’s 1654 calculation that the earth was created by God in 4004 BC, is literally true (Good Omens, 13).

[9] Good Omens, 52.

[10] The Omen, directed by Richard Donner, written by David Selzer, (1976, 20th Century Fox).

[11] The film’s pseudo-biblical authority here is drawn specifically from Revelation 13:18: “This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.”

[12] Good Omens, 27–33.

[13] Neil Gaiman, interviewed for Just William…and Richmal, (Dora Productions for BBC Radio 4, 1 May 2022, on Radio 4).

[14] For example, in Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (London: Corgi, 1993), and Neil Gaiman, American Gods (London: Headline, 2017).

[15] Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time (London: Doubleday, 2001).

[16] Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (London: Golancz, 1996).

[17] Gaiman’s reboot of the 1970s DC character ran for 75 issues from March 1989 to January 1996, and he returned to it in The Dream Hunters (1999) and Overture (October 2013–November 2015). Gaiman has continued to develop other characters from his Sandman universe in various graphic novel and TV iterations up to the present day (notably Death—completely distinct from Pratchett’s version—and Lucifer).

[18] Death appears as a character in 39 of Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels.

[19] Sandman: Endless Nights (New York: Vertigo, 2003) and Sandman: Overture (New York: Vertigo, 2019).

[20] The fact that Pestilence has retired, rather than disappeared entirely, along with Pollution’s musing “If only the old boy had known what opportunities the future had held” (Good Omens, 255), leaves the door open for Pestilence’s return. Writing this paper in the latter stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth pausing to reflect that Good Omens was published nine years after the first recorded case of HIV/AIDS, and before a viable antiviral treatment had been developed.

[21] Pratchett returned to the four horsemen in Thief of Time, in which Death’s attempts to rouse them to ride out against a new existential threat, the Auditors of reality, fails because as projections of human fears and weaknesses, the horsemen have become self-centred and fearful: “To be human was to change …. Men had wished upon them a certain shape, a certain form. And, just like the gods, and the Tooth Fairy, and the Hogfather, their shape had changed them” (Thief of Time, 202).

[22] Good Omens, 336. Death (who TALKS LIKE THIS) of course, being a constant, stays exactly where he has always been.

[23] Good Omens, 269.

[24] Good Omens, 37, 336.

[25] Pratchett, Hogfather, 149.

[26] The cultural afterlife of the character Damien has itself added to the trope of the “evil one.” Along with its four sequels and a prequel that at the time of writing is on its UK theatrical release, the long-running film franchise has been parodied many times. Outside of Good Omens, my personal favourite is the character Damien Trotter, from the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Damien Trotter first appeared in the episode “Three Men, a Woman and a Baby” (Only Fools and Horses, Season 7, Episode 6, directed by Tony Dow, written by John Sullivan, 1 February 1991, on BBC1). Damien’s uncle Rodney becomes convinced that he, like the child in Donner’s film, is the son of the Devil.

[27] Good Omens, 39.

[28] John Milton, Paradise Lost (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2000), Book I: I).

[29] Monty Python’s Life of Brian, directed by Terry Jones, written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin (1979, Cinema International Corporation).

[30] The story has since been published as part of a limited-edition collectors’ bundle (666 copies were printed) to mark the 30th anniversary of Good Omens’ original publication. It currently resales at eye-watering cost and I—to paraphrase Hastur, Duke of Hell—would give someone else’s right arm for the opportunity to read it (Good Omens, 18).

[31] Gaiman, “Afterword,” Good Omens, 386-7.

[32] Good Omens, 53.

[33] Good Omens, 41.

[34] We are informed in a footnote that the biological child of the cultural attaché was put up for adoption by the satanic order, and grows up to be Adam Young’s childhood nemesis, Greasy Johnson (Good Omens, 122).

[35] In the 2019 TV adaptation these two parts are played by the actors David Tennant and Michael Sheen, who also play Crowley and Aziraphale respectively (“In the Beginning,” Good Omens, Season 1, Episode 1, directed by Douglas McKinnon, written by Neil Gaiman, 31 May 2019, on Amazon Prime).

[36] Good Omens, 64. Refers to the hellhound introduced to the Thorn residence by Damien’s governess, and the scene in the film The Omen where Damien deliberately rides his tricycle into his mother, causing her to fall over a balcony and miscarry.

[37] Good Omens, 345.

[38] The Hebrew word for human (adam/אדמ) is derived from the Hebrew noun adamah (אדמה), meaning “soil” or “earth.” Hence “Adam” in some translations.

[39] Good Omens, 66.

[40] Good Omens, 211.

[41] The Omen’s co-opting of scripture was heavily reliant on a book that continues to be influential on the American Christian political right wing, Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth (New York: Bantam, 1973). I explore the relationship between Lindsey’s polemic and the film in more detail in my doctoral thesis, planned for submission in 2025.

[42]Good Omens, 66.

[43] Good Omens, 78-80.

[44] Richmal Crompton, William the Outlaw. (London: Macmillan, 2022), 82-87.

[45] Good Omens, 133.

[46] Phyllis Trible, God and Rhetoric of Sexuality. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 9.

[47] Good Omens, 80.

[48] Arthur Walker-Jones, “Naming the Human Animal: Genesis 1-3 and other animals in human becoming” in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 52.4 (2017): 1005, doi:10.1111/zygo.12375.

[49] The term “Antichrist” appears in only three biblical passages, all from the first and second letters of John in the New Testament (1 John 2:18–27; 1 John 4:1–6; 2 John 7). There is no explicit requirement in scripture to think of the Antichrist as an individual.

[50]“I made him just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,” and “if I foreknew, / Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.” Milton, Paradise Lost, III: 99-9.

[51] First introduced in Good Omens, 38.

[52] Good Omens, 367.

[53] Walker-Jones, “Naming the Human Animal,” 1013.

[54] Patrick McArdle, “Called by name: Contemporary Christian Anthropology,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 58.4 (2005): 222, doi:10.1017/S0036930605001018.

[55] McCardle, “Called by Name,” 232.

[56] Timmy was introduced in the first book of Blyton’s series Five on a Treasure Island, published in 1942.

[57] The Beano is a long-running British children’s comic which has existed in various print and (latterly) online iterations since 1938.

[58] Of course, if ineffability is brought into play it might have been God’s intent for Adam to come to Tadfield all along, but Adam’s shaping Tadfield according to his own model can still be considered to be an act of free will if we accept that human free will is an essential and necessary component of ineffability.

[59] Good Omens, 174.

[60] Good Omens, 213.

[61] Good Omens, 216.

[62] The Boys Own Paper, a periodical aimed at young and teenage boys, was published in Britain between 1879 and 1967.

[63] Good Omens, 211.

[64] Good Omens, 291.

[65] McArdle, “Called by Name,” 221.

[66] Good Omens, footnote to 121.

[67] The three bikers Big Ted, Pigbog and Greaser are killed when they ride into the back of a fish delivery truck. Undeterred, and just before he passes out, the surviving biker Skuzz declares himself to be “People Covered in Fish” (Good Omens, 283-5).

[68] Adam as the Antichrist has a different part to play, whilst Death’s role is a constant who will persist even after the horsepersons have been defeated.

[69] Good Omens, 335–36.

[70] Good Omens, 350.

[71] Good Omens, 345.