There are a surprisingly small number of truly universal human experiences. Alongside the
shortlist of being born, eating food and having a strong opinion on the best Star Trek captain,
the one thing everybody will eventually have in common is the one experience no reliable witness
has ever adequately described: death. If you'll pardon the morbidity - although, in my defense,
you did choose to click on this video - death is something we all face eventually, and the fact is
most of us brush up against its consequences long before we deal with it ourselves. It's a tragedy,
an inevitability, and a very frequent theme to explore in fiction, because creative types
have a tendency to memento their mori with slightly alarming frequency and it's not too
surprising that themes of death work their way into an awful lot of art. It's a time-honored
tradition to process grief by working through the big feelings in a creative medium, and that
means we get a lot of stories where the writer is grappling with at least one serious loss,
or sipping from a cocktail of existential emotions ranging from dread to sorrow to contemplation to
celebration. After all, you can't ponder death for long without also thinking about life.
One rather interesting way this can manifest is the trope we'll be discussing today:
the concept of personifying death. Anthropomorphic personification is one of
humanity's first and favorite tools. When in doubt about how to handle a particularly mysterious
concept, the first thing we tend to do is give it a face and a voice and try to tackle it like
an equal. Fables, legends, morality tales - from a certain standpoint, even gods fall under this
umbrella. Come up with characters to represent and explore the world around you and an unknowable
universe becomes a storybook. And when we look at something as complicated and nebulous as the
concept of death, historically, we've jumped at the chance to give it a face and voice too.
Personifications of death are some of the oldest stories we have, and they come in a few flavors,
ranging from rulers of the underworld and keepers of the dead like Ereshkigal, Izanami, King Yama,
Hela, Hades and Persephone, to psychopomps that guide the dead like Hermes, Anubis, the Ankou,
and Azrael, to actual personifications of death itself like Thanatos or the
fourth horseman of the apocalypse. The lines between these categories can get a bit wibbly,
but broadly there's a lot of different ways to take the existential mystery that is death
and turn it into a character that we can get a handle on. Some of them are dispassionate,
others cruel, some are helpful or even kind. The only consistency across death's many faces
is its inevitability - outside of that, it really depends on how the writer thinks of it.
And, bluntly, this isn't something most people like to think about very much.
When it comes to our ability to grasp existential concepts, death is simultaneously weirdly easy
and weirdly hard. On the one hand, it's pretty much the only guaranteed experience anyone gets,
so you'd think that'd be a leg up, but it's also notoriously poorly documented. We don't
have the answers about it that we wish we had - no eyewitness accounts, no clear communication
from beyond the grave - and broadly we're pretty bad at comprehending the concept of a cessation
of existence, whether that's something as vast as a human life or something as basic as a building
you used to go to. The way our memories work is kind an eternal present; when recalled, they
feel very close to us, even if the actual event they're recalling is very old. Intellectually,
we know something or someone might be gone - but emotionally, it doesn't feel that way. We don't
stop remembering things just because they don't exist anymore - if anything, that just makes us
remember them even harder. Our brains seem almost unwilling to accept that anything can be gone, and
will instead usually interpret it as "far away" or "just not here right now" - which also seems to be
why we experience things like nostalgia, or find ourselves confused and disoriented when revisiting
an old location that used to be familiar but has since been changed by the natural progression
of life. It's weird to us when the closeness of our memories and the closeness of reality don't
line up with each other, and if we were better emotionally at accepting that things change and
end, this probably wouldn't stress us out so much. All that to say… this is a heavy subject. Arguably
the heaviest. This is something that is, at its most basic level, difficult for us to emotionally
understand or accept. We pretty much only face it on the worst days of our lives, and because
of that, it almost always hurts. We generally avoid things that hurt us, which means a lot
of people - very reasonably - don't really think about death until they're forced to confront it.
But the good thing about all this is that this truly is a universal concept,
which means none of us are facing it alone. People have been trying to make sense of it for tens of
thousands of years, and their conclusions have outlived them. We have a lot to work with here,
and even if it's a sad story, it's one we're all telling together. And the more we make
sense of it, the less frightening it becomes. So when it comes to personifying the concept
of death as a character, there's a little bit of subdivision here. There are personifications
of death that are Guides to Death, which are basically mythological psychopomps - these
are people whose job it is to guide the dead and dying to a final destination of
some sort that represents actual death. These guys are not themselves embodiments of death,
but instead simply do a job directly related to death, and are correspondingly total wildcards
in the character department and can have basically any personality or day job, because being a guide
to the souls of the dead is a thing they do and not a thing they are. Some of these characters are
cheerful goofballs, some are noble warriors, some are absolute weirdos and most of them are at least
kind of immortal. These stories don't usually have much to say about death as a whole, although
in some stories they do kind of de-mystify the process. If the afterlife is just a place that
characters can go to and come out of again - which isn't always the case in these stories,
but is rather common when psychopomps take center stage - the mystery gets a little stripped away.
Characters that are dead have just gone somewhere else that these guys can go to, a real proverbial
Farm Upstate. These stories don't really tackle the existential questions so much as they provide
a fictional answer - when someone dies, they cleanly go from point A to point B, helped along
by character C. These guys are surprisingly common in anime, where being pals with a shinigami is one
of the easiest ways to wind up with superpowers. Slightly similar but wildly different in
personality we find the Death-Adjacent Assholes. These characters are antagonistic to downright
villainous, typically very powerful with a lot of control over death - and they're generally in
favor of it, usually because they get something out of it, like power or a prolonged lifespan
of their own. And, crucially, they're dicks. These beings might call themselves "death",
but really their only gimmick is just regular killing people and occasionally getting some kind
of evil powerup out of it, which is just one rung up the "Basic Bitch Villain" ladder from tying
girls to railroad tracks. Death-Adjacent Assholes make great antagonists because their motivation
is incredibly simple and that leaves a lot of room for personality and vibes. Much like the
classic Pure Evil Villain, what these guys lack in personal complexity they make up for in style,
hatability and raw destructive power. And because they aren't REAL death, it's also possible for our
heroes to actually defeat them without triggering massive cosmological consequences. But much like
the Guides To Death, these dudes don't exactly make much of a statement about the existential
ramifications they initially appear to represent. Guides To Death and Death-Adjacent Assholes are
not death itself, they just work with it, and so neither one necessarily requires all that
much pondering on the part of the writer. And as a result, neither of these guys tend
to be found in the same stories that feature a Literal Death, a being that personifies death
itself. When someone dies, this character is who they deal with - the be-all end-all. They're the
end of the story, a neutral fact of existence. Their personality tends to be on the spectrum
between subdued and actively antagonistic, and they might initially appear harsh and cruel - but
it usually becomes clear eventually that they're actually pretty chill, potentially even kind and
compassionate. Stories that personify death itself usually conclude that death doesn't need to be a
jerk or a villain - they can just… be. Waiting at the end of the story whenever it's time to
close the book. These embodiments of death often actually really like people because they've had
a lot of time to get to know and appreciate them, and if they fill an antagonistic role,
it's usually because they have a reason to oppose the main characters that they aren't ready to
accept yet. They don't tend to be evil, they can just be kind of scary and sad to think about.
And when a story is about death, it's also inevitably about life. When a story
features a true personification of death, a characterization of the end of all stories,
that story is going to be making some kind of statement about the nature of death,
and thus by extension what it means to be alive. In stories where Literal Death is the antagonist,
of which there are a good few, the arc of the story is almost never about the protagonist
defeating or escaping them, although it usually takes the protagonist a while to accept that.
It's about how a protagonist obsessed with their oncoming death is depriving themself of a chance
to really live, and that the protagonist doesn't have to overcome a fact of existence, they have to
overcome their own fear of it. And it makes sense that this is a common conclusion for stories to
draw. Confronting one's own mortality is a weird double-edged sword. It's a scary and unhappy
thought that directs us ask ourselves things like, "would I be content if the story ended right here,
right now?" which a question that often stirs up painful regrets or dissatisfaction. But when we
come back to reality and see that the story isn't ending right here and now, there's a couple ways
we can go. We might respond to that blend of bad feelings by running from them and what they
represent, trying to prolong our lives as much as possible - and running is a natural response to
any fear - but we can also do something healthier and shift into a new perspective on life and how
we can move forward spending it in a way we're happy with. In stories where the character starts
off running from death, they're liable to realize that if their only goal in life is to not die,
that's just meeting the bare minimum definition of being alive and they're missing their chance
to use their life for anything more interesting. But this characterization of death is very simple.
As a personification, it basically just puts a face to a garden-variety existential crisis - all
the focus is still put on the mortal protagonist figuring out how to process and accept it. These
Literal Deaths can still be fun, but their actual role in the story is a bit Sexy-Lamp-ish - they
could be replaced by an inanimate deadly threat and serve the same purpose in the
protagonist's character development. But this is not the only role a Literal Death can play.
Some writers, notably Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, let Death be a main character - and a
damn interesting one at that. Making Literal Death a focus character with their own arc and stories
is a challenge, because it's hard to let them be Existential Death - a universal concept that spans
the scale from cellular to stellar - as well as a person with agency and things they want. It's
hard to reconcile these two wildly different forms of characterization without one of them hindering
the other, but some stories pull it off - and these stories often come from people who seem
to have done a lot of musing on the subject and have gotten past a lot of the grief and the hurt
that surrounds this idea, leaving only a fact of existence that they explore from every angle.
So let's… spend the rest of this video talking about the Death of the Discworld.
For those of you who've missed out on it, the short of it is that Discworld is a fantasy
series written by Sir Terry Pratchett. It's got over forty books in it, and while it started off
as a satire of Sword And Sorcery genre staples, it quickly developed into its own world that explored
its own comedic nuances with growing sincerity. In the Discworld series, Literal Actual Death
is a recurring character and, after his first few appearances where Pratchett was clearly
still figuring him out, he's consistently a deeply compassionate figure who finds mortals
fascinating, wonderful, and well worth caring for - in large part because he sees so many of them,
admittedly usually on their worst and most depressing days. He cameos in a lot of the
books because he's Capital-D Death so anytime a character dies he turns up to collect 'em, or
sometimes just has a near-protagonist experience if they come particularly close to biting it - but
there are also books that are just about him as the main character, one of which is Reaper Man,
where Death spends most of the book forcibly retired by the Lawful Neutral auditors of the
universe that didn't like that he was developing a personality. He goes to live out his last days
working on a farm, living among humans as a beloved oddball and even saving a few lives.
The collective unconsciousness of humanity eventually replaces him with a more classical
Death with a skeleton horse, a crown and corresponding power complex, and - worst of
all - a sense of theatrics. During their final showdown, Death's own existence is preserved
for a few vital seconds by a new friend's heroic sacrifice, and he uses that time to destroy the
new Death before going to make his case before the greatest Death of all, the Death of Universes. He
says that Death has to care about the lives it ends - because "what can the harvest hope for,
if not for the care of the reaper man?" This isn't the only Discworld story where
Death's deep love of life comes to center stage. In Hogfather,
a very affectionate christmas parody where the auditors try to assassinate Fantasy Santa Claus,
Death - currently filling in for the Jolly Old Elf in question while his granddaughter does
the legwork of actually saving christmas - bumps straight into The Little Match Girl, a classic
tale of a young girl freezing to death. Death is informed that this story is meant to be festive
because it reminds people to be grateful for the things they have, and Death disagrees, saving the
girl's life - which is not something he could normally do, but is something he can do while
pulling double-duty as the spirit of the holiday season, because the Hogfather gives presents, and
there's no greater present than a future, which is something that Death would know intimately.
But Discworld's Death is not omnipotent, and more importantly, he's not actually
nice. One of his more complicated moments comes in a book some years before Hogfather,
called Soul Music. You might've noticed that I mentioned he had a granddaughter and wondered how
that happened. The short of it is Death adopted a daughter, then later took an apprentice,
the apprentice and the daughter hit it off, and when the apprentice inevitably beefed it at the
whole being Death thing, he and Death's daughter were sent out of Death's timeless domain to live
human lives together. They had a daughter, Susan, and then as the inciting incident in Soul Music,
their carriage has a terrible accident and they both die, leaving Susan behind. The problem
complicating this standard issue tragic backstory is that Death is a character, and that means in
a very real way, Susan's parents are dead because her grandfather killed them. The idea that haunts
her throughout the book is that he could have done something, and the truth he freely admits is that,
yes. He could have done something, but they wanted to be human, not immortal, and that meant this had
to happen sometime, because that's what he is. And he doesn't even seem all that broken up about it,
except no, he absolutely is, it makes him so sad he goes on sabbatical trying to find a
way to get drunk enough to forget, and Susan gets cosmologically roped into doing his job
instead because someone has to do the job of the inevitable. Death himself mourns the loss of his
loved ones and struggles to reconcile his own inevitability and the choices they made with how
much it hurts him to lose the people he loves. By the end of the story Susan and Death have
successfully saved the day by blackmailing the indomitable spirit of Rock And Roll,
it makes sense in context, and Susan has gained a much deeper understanding of what exactly
Death can and can't do, leading them to reconcile and, essentially, find a way to grieve together.
It's a pretty uncontroversial take that Discworld's Death is one of the best-written
Deaths in all of fiction, and if you disagree, that's cool, pistols at dawn and I won't need
any backup. But these are stories that are uniquely powerful because they unravel and
explore the ramifications of letting Death be both a cold inevitability and a person with feelings.
He comes across as simultaneously deeply alien and trying his absolute best, both distant from
humanity and loving it very profoundly. Every time someone else tries to take on the job of Death,
they always try to bend and break the rules so that only the people they don't like die - only
the people they think deserve it, and the people who deserve life get to live. Death himself never
struggles with this, or at least never succumbs to that desire, because Death understands that
there has to be a law and he has to be impartial. There's a nature of things and he slots into it.
And all the mortals that take on his job, Susan and Susan's father - they all struggle with this
very strongly, because they are human, and Death, for all of his wonderful character traits… is not.
Terry Pratchett said he would sometimes get letters from people who were terminally ill who
hoped that Terry's version was the one they were going to meet. He said that those letters would
leave him staring at the wall for quite some time. And to be upfront, that makes me really sad. This
whole thing breaks my heart in a dozen different ways. And you know what? That's okay. That's the
point. Sometimes things are just sad, and it's a matter of finding a way to sit with that sadness.
It's not something to run from or explain away or repress - it's a fact, and it's sad, and we can
let it be sad. Terry Pratchett gave us a version of Death that he mulled over for decades and
introduced to us like an old friend. He created an answer to a profound existential mystery that
worked so well that it gave real, tangible comfort to real people facing it down - and
it's impossible to know for sure, but maybe it even helped him when he faced the same thing.
These stories are deeply cathartic, and catharsis is not the same thing as happiness. Catharsis
is the process of passing through deeply intense emotions and experiencing a release on the other
side. Stories about Death are also stories about life, and the writers that pull it off
guide their audience through a journey that lets them sit with that sorrow - and then
reminds them that they're alive. Conveniently, this is just about the only thing an artist can
reliably assume about their target audience. We are alive when we internalize these stories,
when artists introduce us to their interpretation of what comes next. We sit with it, we feel what
they feel, we let the sorrow get nice and comfy - and then we breathe. And we're still here. And we
don't know for sure what, if anything, happens next - but we've gotten a little better at
being okay with that. We tell these stories for a reason: it saves us from having to figure this all
out from nothing. We don't need to reinvent the wheel every time we remember that it's turning.
So… yeah.