Dennis Potter Between Two Worlds pp 70-109 | Cite as
Between Good and Evil: Religion and the Romantic Vision
Abstract
‘When I was a boy’, Jack Black declares in Follow the Yellow Brick Road (1972), ‘ … I thought God was watching me all the time, every minute of the day.’ (Muller, 1973, p.330) As a sick and neurotic adult, however, he desperately prays to God for a ‘sign’, but receives only the word — ‘Slime’ (p.332). This answer is a clear symbol of the painful repulsion he now feels towards an increasingly secular world. Often overlooked by critics, the role of religion and the desperate quest for spiritual salvation is one of the central concerns of Potter’s work. Reflecting Modernism’s search for meaning in a Godless universe his characters constantly grapple for a form of personal redemption in a world which offers little certainty other than the always ‘implacable presence of death itself’ (Potter, 1984, p.20). His central protagonists continually turn in desperation to a God who is either missing or simply unable or unwilling to answer. Yet they never truly give up yearning for a ‘religious’ sense of the universe — a sense they first experienced as a child.
Keywords
Religious Experience Christian Belief Daily Mail Creative Imagination Daily TelegraphPreview
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Notes
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