No, no God

Andrea posted about God and Satan being much less present in Good Omens, and posed some interesting questions, so I responded to a few of them here. This is Andrea's post.

Andrea, I agree with you here. There are almost no references to either God or Satan. One would think they would be most present because they are so key in Paradise Lost, but they're not. It seemed odd to me at first too, but when I thought about it, I realized that it's a totally different time period.

In Paradise Lost, God and Satan were very much present because they both had important jobs to do. God had just introduced Adam and Eve to the world, and had to influence them in a good way, trying to help them. Satan on the other hand is trying to get back at God and tempt mankind. This would cause man to understand evil as well as good, enabling them to sin. Satan and his plan have to be explained in depth to help the reader understand what's actually going on.

In Good Omens, however, God and Satan really don't have to be present nearly as much. Satan's already done his work, causing the fall of the human race. Sure, he still wants to cause more destruction, but even then, at the beginning of the book, Crowley realized he was nearly out of work! He realizes that people themselves are doing much worse things than he could ever think of. Satan's barely present because he has a few "minions" doing his work for him, what little there is left to do.

God is also at this point nearly out of work. He's been trying to get mankind to do the right thing since Adam and Eve. Even they messed up! Aziraphael is there to try to make things better, but at this point, the human race has gone so downhill, there's only so much he can do. Since God wanted humans to have free will, he can't stop what they are doing. He has given them options, but they keep choosing temptation. After a while, I'd get tired too.

All in all, I think the reason God and Satan don't make many appearances is because, while they should be key characters, they are not. This is much later in time, and mankind has taken over their rule, basically. Not even Satan can get to them as well as he'd like.