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Author's perception of death and treatment of death in Everyman

Introduction

The Somonyng of Everyman, also known as Everyman, is an English morality play written in the 15th century by an unknown author, whose name still remains a mystery. The play seeks to examine the most important question of all—the Christian salvation using the allegorical characters and describes the values and morals that he is supposed to follow in order to attain that salvation. The major theme of the play says that all the good and evil deeds performed in one's life are recorded and presented after death, and then the subject is either granted salvation of punishment, depending upon the deeds performed by him during his lifetime.

Everyman mainly refers to mankind, and talks about the general topics that are faced by every person. It deals with life and events of everyman, and everyman tries to convince other characters present around him in an attempt to improve his own account. The conflicts and clash between the good and evil forces working on the human beings are described in the play, which deals with the issues and problems that arise in the way of attaining salvation.

Perception of Death and Treatment of Death in Everyman

In the play, death has been personified, and it has been dealt with as an agent of God, who reaches the main subject and the protagonist Everyman. The author has used the phenomenon as a character in order to describe the harsh and unchangeable reality that all human beings are destined to meet death one day or the other. Whoever comes to this planet Earth has to go back one day, and the same fact is described by author by depicting Death as a person, an individual who meets each person on Earth.

In the play, death is an antagonist and plays the role of actual and real death, an intangible phenomenon that cannot be grasped or seen. The term has the capacity to grab attention of the listener immediately, and some people are even offended by the use of this term, but the fact remains that death is an unavoidable phenomenon that has to be faced by each and every living being. The author of the play has a complete understanding of the phenomenon and uses it as a character in order to draw the attention of the reader and to make him understand the concept. The major characteristics of death, as described by the author, include the point that death is controlled by God and visits every person according to the order given to him by God. He has visited a lot of people in earth, and all the remaining ones will be visited by it in the future (Thomas, 1963, pp: 468).

It is eminent to mention here that death is submissive to God's commands and does as He says, and other characteristics of death are presented to be the same as that of actual death. It is also described that death is merely a ...