Armageddon? Necessary! The Representation of Consumerist-Materialist "Chaos" in Terry Pratchett's and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens

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Although the novel entitled "Good Omens" written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman tells us a story about an Apocalypse, it never explains the reason why Armageddon takes place when it does explicitly to the reader; we can merely hear a strongly sarcastic narrative voice echoing through the whole novel, narrating the events and talking about the characters of the book. For this reason, the immediate question I personally put up while and after reading the novel, (which is also the focus question of my work) is: “Armageddon? Why now? Why not later/at all? After reading Pratchett’s and Gaiman’s work multiple times, examining it closely and carefully I realized that the novel is in fact a satire of postmodern industrialized way of life through its way of depicting London, as it shows an urban society based on a neoliberal political system, in which a commodity fetishism-loaded consumerist-materialism dominates the value system of the people, and becomes a basis for Social Darwinist competition. It is key to point out here that each of these aspects are being perceived as ideologies by the society depicted in the novel, thus it can be said that they form an ideological system that powers Good Omens London. In my thesis, I argue that in fact, this ideological system that Good Omens Londoners live according to is the reason why Armageddon itself becomes necessary in Good Omens, as it causes a so-called Consumerist-Materialist “Chaos”, which has to be purified by ending humanity (in the world of the novel) once and for all by examining each element of this network in the context of the novel closely.

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Armageddon, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, Ideology, Consumerism, Materialism, Neo-Liberalism
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