Good Omens

by

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Adam Young/The Antichrist Character Analysis

Adam is the Antichrist—the son of Satan—who is inadvertently raised by human parents. According to biblical prophecy and God’s “Ineffable Plan,” the Antichrist is, in the days after his 11th birthday, supposed to bring about Armageddon (the end of the world). But due to a mix-up at the hospital, the infant Antichrist is placed with the Mr. Young family instead of the American Cultural Attaché—and so the Antichrist grows up as Adam Young, a normal human boy. When Adam eventually receives a dog—unbeknownst to him, the hell-hound—for his 11th birthday. He names it Dog, and the hell-hound transforms into the exact small, scrappy dog that he wanted—a mark of Adam’s normalcy. At about this time, Adam meets the witch Anathema Device, who introduces him to the occult magazine New Aquarian Digest. The magazine introduces Adam to the importance of being environmentally friendly, the ills of nuclear power, and conspiracy theories like UFOs and government cover-ups. And because he’s the Antichrist, his interest in these new ideas brings about strange worldwide phenomena leading up to Armageddon. Though Adam briefly thinks that he wants to rule the world, he has admirable motivations: he wants to fix the things that others have messed up. And when Adam sees how much his powers terrifies his friends—Pepper, Wensleydale, and Brain—he gives up his powers as the Antichrist and denies his destiny by refusing to incite Armageddon. In doing so, Adam becomes fully human. He understands that everyone needs an adversary, and that’s all Armageddon is about: Heaven and Hell want an excuse to fight. He also suggests that just because something is written or foretold doesn’t mean that it can’t be changed or erased—people, in his understanding, are complex and fickle. After averting Armageddon, Adam returns to his life as a human, though he still retains some of his supernatural powers.

Adam Young/The Antichrist Quotes in Good Omens

The Good Omens quotes below are all either spoken by Adam Young/The Antichrist or refer to Adam Young/The Antichrist. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good and Evil Theme Icon
).
Eleven Years Ago Quotes

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:

“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:
Saturday Quotes

“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:

“Oh, if that’s all that’s worryin’ you, don’t you worry,” said Adam airily, “’cos I could make you all just do whatever I wanted—”

He stopped, his ears listening in horror to the words his mouth was speaking. The Them were backing away.

[...]

“No,” he said hoarsely. “No. Come back! I command you!”

They froze in mid-dash.

Adam stared.

“No, I dint mean it—” he began. “You’re my friends—”

[...]

Adam opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound that a merely mortal throat should not have been able to utter [...]

Whatever had been standing in the old quarry before, Adam Young was standing there now. A more knowledgeable Adam Young, but Adam Young nevertheless. Possibly more of Adam Young than there had ever been before.

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 286-87
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 DO NOT UNDERSTAND, he said. SURELY YOUR VERY EXISTENCE REQUIRES THE ENDING OF THE WORLD. IT IS WRITTEN.

“I dunt see why anyone has to go an’ write things like that,” said Adam calmly. “The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven’t found out all about it yet, so I don’t want anyone messing it about or endin’ it before I’ve had a chance to find out about it. So you can all just go away.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Death (speaker), War/Red/Scarlett, Famine/Black/Sable, Pollution/White
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis:

“I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people,” said Adam severely. “Anyway, if you stopped tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Then he said: “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 337
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:
Get the entire Good Omens LitChart as a printable PDF.
Good Omens PDF

Adam Young/The Antichrist Quotes in Good Omens

The Good Omens quotes below are all either spoken by Adam Young/The Antichrist or refer to Adam Young/The Antichrist. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good and Evil Theme Icon
).
Eleven Years Ago Quotes

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:

“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:
Saturday Quotes

“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:

“Oh, if that’s all that’s worryin’ you, don’t you worry,” said Adam airily, “’cos I could make you all just do whatever I wanted—”

He stopped, his ears listening in horror to the words his mouth was speaking. The Them were backing away.

[...]

“No,” he said hoarsely. “No. Come back! I command you!”

They froze in mid-dash.

Adam stared.

“No, I dint mean it—” he began. “You’re my friends—”

[...]

Adam opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound that a merely mortal throat should not have been able to utter [...]

Whatever had been standing in the old quarry before, Adam Young was standing there now. A more knowledgeable Adam Young, but Adam Young nevertheless. Possibly more of Adam Young than there had ever been before.

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 286-87
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 DO NOT UNDERSTAND, he said. SURELY YOUR VERY EXISTENCE REQUIRES THE ENDING OF THE WORLD. IT IS WRITTEN.

“I dunt see why anyone has to go an’ write things like that,” said Adam calmly. “The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven’t found out all about it yet, so I don’t want anyone messing it about or endin’ it before I’ve had a chance to find out about it. So you can all just go away.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Death (speaker), War/Red/Scarlett, Famine/Black/Sable, Pollution/White
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis:

“I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people,” said Adam severely. “Anyway, if you stopped tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Then he said: “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 337
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: