Good Omens Themes

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…

Crowley and Aziraphale are a demon and an angel, respectively, who have spent the last 6,000 years living on Earth among human beings—and because of this, they both have a keen interest in what it means to be human. Crowley and Aziraphale put forth different (and at times, contradictory) definitions of human nature, but Good Omens suggests that there are a few things that define human beings. Namely, it shows that people have the ability…

Despite the fact that Good Omens is about the possible end of the world, it’s nevertheless a humorous book. This is by design—in the book’s supplemental materials, Neil Gaiman says that while he and coauthor Terry Pratchett were writing Good Omens, “The main objective was to make the other one laugh.” By writing such a funny story about death and the end of the world, Gaiman and Pratchett show that it’s possible to find…

At its heart, Good Omens is a story about friendship. It portrays close, affectionate bonds between the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale, as well as between the Antichrist Adam Young and his gang of mortal human friends, known around their village as the “Them.” Through its exploration of these strong relationships between individuals whom readers might not expect to be close friends, Good Omens suggests that friendship isn’t only available to individuals with…