Several of Graham Swift’s novels are permeated with the sense of an ending and eschatological reflections. The characters’ vision of their lives tends to be underpinned by a notion of decline. While the experience of loss and the confrontation with mortality depicted in Swift’s fiction have been extensively analysed, less attention has been paid to the fact that in perceiving their lives as a process of deterioration, the characters implicitly acknowledge the existence of an initial stage of happiness against which this process may be measured. This paper will identify and examine the infrequent yet meaningful intimations of primal harmony and happiness, which sometimes take on quasi-religious overtones, reminiscent of the concept of paradise.
 

Several of Graham Swift’s novels are permeated with the sense of an ending and eschatological reflections. The characters’ vision of their lives tends to be underpinned by a notion of decline. While the experience of loss and the confrontation with mortality depicted in Swift’s fiction have been extensively analysed, less attention has been paid to the fact that in perceiving their lives as a process of deterioration, the characters implicitly acknowledge the existence of an initial stage of happiness against which this process may be measured. This paper will identify and examine the infrequent yet meaningful intimations of primal harmony and happiness, which sometimes take on quasi-religious overtones, reminiscent of the concept of paradise.