Between Two Fires

Content Warning: This source material contains sexual assault and the threat of sexual assault on minors, as well as alcohol addiction and extreme instances of body horror. It also depicts societal anti-gay bias and antisemitism.

“She thought that the ones she was seeing were lesser ones; that the famous ones like Gabriel were preparing for Judgment Day, which must be soon. Gabriel would blow his horn and all the Dead in Christ would get out of their graves; she knew this was supposed to be a good thing, but the idea of dead bodies moving again was the worst thing she could imagine; it frightened her so much she couldn’t sleep sometimes.”

Delphine’s faith in God makes her open to her visions of the angels. That she does not see the “famous ones” foreshadows the novel’s climax; the angels are not quite preparing for “Judgment Day,” but they are preparing for a major confrontation with evil. The idea of “dead bodies moving again” alludes to the doctrine of God raising people from the dead; since Delphine has experienced the societal trauma of the Black Death, she fears this, not wanting to see more corpses. In fact, reanimated dead bodies feature heavily in the novel, but they have been raised by demons, not God.

“If God wanted order and goodness in the world, He shouldn’t have made things quite so hard on us. We’re all dead men, and women. He wants chaos and death? He gets them, and what say do we have in it?”

Jacquot’s words reflect the despair that comes from collective trauma. Since medieval French society was mainly Christian, the doctrine of God’s goodness was deeply ingrained. However, Jacquot logically concludes that God cannot want goodness for humanity because he has allowed the plague to spread and destroy their world.

“‘He was so good. Why would God kill good priests?’

‘The plague kills everything. Only the priests who won’t visit the sick have a chance of living.’”

Delphine struggles to reconcile her belief in God’s goodness with the destruction around her. Thomas points out that the bad priests survive because they are too selfish to care for the sick—an instance of The Everyday Nature of Good and Evil.