Though the origin of Blatty’s novel is rather well-known, his intent to present the story to the public is not as obvious. Other sources that I have presented suggest that he wanted to bring forth an assertion of God’s existence. In this article, Nick Cull takes a deeper look into the nuances of the book and film, presenting Blatty’s release of the story as a commentary on the times.

Cull views The Exorcist as a proactive device by Blatty to influence the early 1970s; he writes, “It was more than a product of its time; it actively sought to shape that time”. Throughout the essay, he relates the novel to current events of the 1960s and 1970s. In the opening pages of the novel, Blatty included quotations meant to illustrate contemporary evil, including an FBI wire tap of a gangster joking about torture and murder and an account of Communist atrocities against priests. In part III of the novel, Blatty also included an epigram about the 1969 massacre at My Lai. Cull asserts that the demon in The Exorcist is actually a combination of those evils – crime, Communism, genocide, war, and assassination. He goes even further to claim that Blatty’s intention was to “scare a new generation of Americans back into church”.

Cull’s description of the film focuses more on the social evils portrayed: inter-generational conflict, the guilt of the middle-aged over neglect of their parents, and risk of the sacred home. It is here that Cull falls into overanalyzing Blatty’s work. Many resources, and even direct quotes, point to the fact that Blatty was not entirely satisfied with the film, having compromised much creative liberty to William Friedkin. Yet film should not be taken to be Blatty’s ideal interpretation of his novel, which is an assumption that Cull lacks in his analysis. Though Cull eventually concedes that The Exorcist brought more Americans back to horror films than the church, his analysis, even if it overanalyzes Blatty’s intentions, provides a deeper interpretation of the film's subtext.