“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.” — Terry Pratchett

Death is a peculiar thing in literature and media. Our stories, folklore, films, and paintings all feature the Grim Reaper in some specific artistic way. Often times, Death is a cloaked figure with a scythe, sometimes it is merely a forlorn figure of mourning. Even through verse, poets interpret death in many ways. The different interpretations of Death are myriad, and understanding its interpretations gives us a better sense of our own morality.

Literature, Myth, and Death

Death in Greek Mythology: Thanatos

In Greek mythology, Thanatos is the personification of Death. He is the son of the goddess of night, Nyx, and he takes humans to the underworld when it was their time. Moreover, he was the “daemonic representation” of the Grim Reaper, but “rarely appeared in any stories” as the god of the Underworld, Hades, took its place in most narratives.

When physically depicted, artists show Thanatos as “a bearded and winged old man.” Sometimes they depict him as “a young person without any beard” with “an upside-down torch in his hand.” Artists also drew Death as a symbol of a dead person in hand, a butterfly or wreath (Greek Gods & Goddesses). He battled both Heracles (literally) and Sisyphus (figuratively) in Greek myth.

As with much Greek mythology, and Death in literature, there is the interpretation and the personification. As Death is a force for the Underworld, he symbolizes the normal, quieter, death as he has a much softer touch than say Hypnos.

Death in “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe

In Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” Death symbolizes the inevitable fate we all share. No matter how closed off we are to the broader public. The story seems to to teach us that by closing the doors to society, and hiding from the world, one is simply putting off the inevitable.

In the story, a wealthy prince, Prospero, lives in a castellated abbey with his elite companions. They wall themselves off from a world ravaged by plague. The plague is the Red Death, and it kills all that it touches. While an allegory to the Bubonic Plague, the story addresses the fears of death and Death itself in physical form. In the end, our protagonist is unable to stave off the merciless caretaker of the dead, as the cloaked menace appears wearing a mask.

As is seen in the story:

The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood — and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

Prospero dies in the end, as “There was a sharp cry–and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death …” In the masked figure’s place is no “tangible form” and the rest of the revelers fall ill and die. Death in literature is both symbolic and literal here in Poe’s story.

Death in Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions

In Death with Interruptions, the character of Death goes on hiatus and the world goes on without her. The disarray caused by Death’s absence becomes noticeable when problems start mounting up for the (permanently) living. In Saramago’s book, Death is a female who is contemplative and philosophical about the purpose of life and death. She carries a scythe and is otherwise fairly Death-like, even though she pines for a more normal existence.

Saramago’s book is a philosophical conundrum. How would humans function if they never died? Death thinks about these things even though she fails to understand her own humanity. This interpretation places Death not as just a figure of merciless killing, but also as a reflective entity that wonders about their own purpose in life.

Death in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series

Pratchett features Death in Discworld as a character who embodies the sort of cliché aspects of Death that readers expect. He wears a black robe, carries a scythe, and oversees Discworld to perform the functions of his job. Throughout the series, Pratchett reveals him to be a more emotional and complex character.

In Pratchett’s world, Death is a worker is a worker and does a job. His change in character throughout the series is a reflection of his building as a person and empathetic being. This relates to us as humans, as through work, we find that death is not the inevitability of life. Rather, it is something that must be done to achieve the final outcome. Death, in this bit of literature, is perfunctory. It needs to happen through somebody’s working existence.

Death in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

In Zusak’s The Book Thief, Death lives and breaths as narrator, telling a tale set in Nazi, Germany in 1939. Death is a disembodied, yet omniscient, voice in this novel, telling his story of a book thief through his own perspective. Death has feelings and takes his job seriously–it’s an emotional affair. As such, Death differs because he is a fully formed and pathos-driven character rather than a silent enforcer of mortal expiration dates.

Death symbolizes the wonder and thought-driven creatures that humans are in their higher-functioning states. He thinks, feels, and questions the actions of humanity in the face of grim violence. Similarly, Death has to wonder about death itself. It is not a happy thing, death, but it is something that comes with a great deal of heartache and love. Death as an emotional force who ponders the meaning of life shows us that it is not a simple result of living. It is a complicated force that shapes lives and changes humanity’s outlook on life.

Death in Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job

In humorist Christopher Moore’s novel, A Dirty Job, Death is your everyday schlub Charlie Asher. Over the course of the novel, Charlie becomes increasingly aware that secret forces have chosen him to be Death. Though, he is baffled by this because he is a “neurotic,” “hypochondriac” who can be described as a “Beta Male.” Considering this, he is a different depiction of Death from previous versions.

Moore is adept at subversion, so in flipping your standard Death tropes, Death is just a dork who seems to be living a dead-end life. Death symbolizes the dark forces that lie at the edge of reality in this story, and also death as a conventional aspect of life. Similarly, Death has a mission and a job to complete. Secrete entities choose people to perform the duties of Death and so its purpose is everlasting and the onus is on, us, the humans for its undertaking.

Conclusion

In summation, death is inevitable. Yet, after analyzing different interpretations, we can be more aware of how Death has been presented in fiction and how its image has shaped our own understanding of life itself. From the cliché Death in a robe with a scythe, to an emotional and omnipotent narrator, Death comes in many forms. As we’ve learned, Death is not any one thing. It can be interpreted through various forms of media, and it has shifting purpose, gender, and perspective. As such, it is important to be aware of how Death is presented and what it represents i