A Summary and Analysis of ‘A Vision of Judgment’ by H. G. Wells

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Vision of Judgment’ was first published in Butterfly in September 1899. The tale is a light and humorous piece about the Day of Judgment, when all of humankind – including the dead – are summoned to appear before God and be judged for their sins and their good deeds.

Summary

The ‘plot’ of ‘A Vision of Judgment’ can be summarised briefly. It is divided into nine brief parts. The Last Trump sounds, and the first-person narrator – who is dead and buried underground – realises that the Day of Judgment has arrived. All of humankind is summoned into the presence of God, including Charles Darwin and Henry the Eighth, among many others.

Each person is called in turn to present themselves before God and confess to their sins. A Wicked Man, who is identified as King Ahab, had many people killed – including one of God’s prophets – and readily owns up to his many crimes, and even appears proud of them. The crowd laughs at how little and pathetic he is when some of his more embarrassing transgressions are read out:

Everybody was laughing. Even the prophet of the Lord whom the Wicked Man had tortured had a smile on his face. The Wicked Man was really such a preposterous little fellow.

‘And then,’ read the Recording Angel, with a smile that set us all agog, ‘one day, when he was a little irascible from over-eating, he—’

‘Oh, not that,’ cried the Wicked Man, ‘nobody knew of that.’

‘It didn’t happen,’ screamed the Wicked Man. ‘I was bad—I was really bad.

Frequently bad, but there was nothing so silly—so absolutely silly—’

Precisely what this ‘silly’ transgression was is not stated, leaving us as readers to kill in the blanks. The angel continues to read:

‘O God!’ cried the Wicked Man. ‘Don’t let them know that! I’ll repent! I’ll apologise …’

The Wicked Man on God’s hand began to dance and weep. Suddenly shame overcame him. He made a wild rush to jump off the ball of God’s little finger, but God stopped him by a dexterous turn of the wrist. Then he made a rush for the gap between hand and thumb, but the thumb closed. And all the while the angel went on reading—reading. The Wicked Man rushed to and fro across God’s palm, and then suddenly turned about and fled up the sleeve of God.

I expected God would turn him out, but the mercy of God is infinite.

Next up is a Saint, who outlines all of the unpleasant things he did to himself to prove his devotion to God. The Recording Angel finds the man’s boasting annoying. After every person has given an account of their life, they are dropped from God’s palm and down his sleeve.

God then shakes them all out of his sleeve and on to a beautiful land on a different planet which orbits the star Sirius. They all now have ‘new clean bodies’. God instructs them all to ‘try again’.

Analysis

‘A Vision of Judgment’ combines the religious, eschatological narrative (derived from the Bible) with science fiction: there is, in fact, no ‘judgment’ (at least, not from God) beyond that which he says to the individual humans on his palm before he drops them into his sleeve. Thereafter, it emerges that there is no heaven and no hell: instead, everyone is to be given a fresh start on a new planet. It is the presence of this new planet, orbiting Sirius, which qualifies this story as science fiction.

But ‘A Vision of Judgment’ is also satire: a satire not on religion, as such, but on human folly. And much of the best satire is about that, after all. King Ahab is a ‘Wicked Man’ reduced to a figure of fun, and as E. B. White said, a despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom: he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

But the Saint, too, is held up as a figure of ridicule, proud of his own self-torture in service of his faith. Even the angel finds him a ‘nuisance’. So he is guilty of the sin of pride, even while he presents himself as a godly man. Wells’s judgment of these figures, and of humankind in general, is fairly forgiving: everyone (at least it appears to be everyone, for they are all tossed out of God’s sleeve) is given a second chance.

In the last analysis, ‘A Vision of Judgment’ suggests that all folly, and even all evil, is ultimately ridiculous rather than anything deserving of greater punishment. Make of that what you will. But it’s certainly noteworthy that Wells’s God here is capable of ‘infinite’ mercy, even against a tyrant like Ahab, who murdered one of God’s own prophets.