The characters in The Satanic Verses struggle constantly with feelings of guilt and sin. Saladin, for example, is ashamed of his ethnicity and strives to be accepted by white English culture. Gibreel struggles with the shame of the hurt he has caused other people, such as Rekha Merchant, but he insists that he does not feel affected by these memories. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the characters feel sullied by their actions and seek purification and absolution, and the competing elements of fire and water symbolize these ideas. In the fire scene, Gibreel and Saladin are thrown from a burning plane and plummet toward a large body of water. The fire above them obliterates their previous identities, and they begin anew once they plunge into the baptismal English Channel. The bomb on the plane and the English Channel cannot purify the two men, but they fixate on fire and water as symbols of purification and absolution for the remainder of the novel.

Gibreel craves absolution of his guilt without the need for admission and atonement. Gibreel's refusal to acknowledge his role in Rekha Merchant's death or the pain he has caused other people begins to fester inside him. He experiences vivid dreams in which he plays the role of the archangel Gibreel; these dreams eventually bleed into his waking life.