Everyman: Death’s Perception and Treatment

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Recommended: Everyman a morality play

“Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them’" (Rev 14:13 NIV). The well-known, late fiftieth century morality play, Everyman, depicts the essence of the correlation between performing good deeds and death. Morality plays were allegorical dramas used to instruct audiences in the morals and promises of the Christian faith by using personification. Although, the author of Everyman remains unknown; it is believed to have been the Dutchman, Elckerlijk. In Everyman, the protagonist, represents all of humanity. Additionally, the author “wanted to challenge the audience to do good works in order to win God’s love and acceptance”. Death, Fellowship, and Good Deeds represent personified characters in which the author uses to present the audience with a play where death is perceived as the inevitable fate of every human; therefore Death should be treated with the same fear which God is accredited.
In Everyman, the author perceives death as the inevitable fate of human souls by exhibiting how life is nothing more than a loan from God. The play opens with a messenger addressing the audience and preparing the way for God to enter the scene. God speaks providing a brief catechism and reprimand. “How that all creatures be to me unkind, living without dread in worldly prosperity…Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God.” God professes his displeasure for how people live for their own pleasure. God continues to speak, “My law that I showed, when I for them died, they forget clean, and shedding of my blood red; I hanged between two, it cannot be denied; to get them life I suffered to be dea...

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...remember we must die.”

Works Cited

Adu-Gyamfi, Yaw, and Mark Ray Schmidt. Literature and Spirituality. Boston: Longman, 2011.
English 102. “Lesson 25 Introduction to English Medieval: Morality Drama” (Online Presentation). Lecture, Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. Accessed May 6, 2014.
English 102. “Lesson 26 Everyman: A Morality Play” (Online Presentation). Lecture, Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. Accessed May 6, 2014.
Paulson, Julie. "Death's Arrival and Everyman's Separation." Theatre Survey 48, no. 1 (05, 2007): 121-41, http://search.proquest.com/docview/211162380?accountid=12085.
Rosenberg, Judith Church. "Parallels: The Morality Play Everyman and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne." Order No. 1462903, Texas Woman's University, 2008. In PROQUESTMS ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text, http://search.proquest.com/docview/304321002?accountid=12085

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