| Death | |
| Series: | Discworld |
| Species: | Personification of Death |
| Gender: | Generally depicted as male[1] [2] |
| Alias: | Bill Door (in Reaper Man) |
| First: | The Colour of Magic (1983) |
| Last: | The Shepherd's Crown (2015) |
| Creator: | Terry Pratchett |
| Children: | Ysabell (adoptive daughter) |
| Relatives: | Mort (son-in-law) Susan Sto Helit (granddaughter) |
| Weapon: | Scythe |
| Portrayer: | Marnix van den Broeke |
| Voice: | Peter Serafinowicz Christopher Lee Wendell Pierce Ian Richardson John Rowe Michael Kilgarriff Stephen Thorne Rob Brydon Nigel Planer |
Death is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and a parody of several other depictions of the Grim Reaper across Europe. He is a black-robed skeleton who usually carries a scythe and on occasion a sword for dispatching royalty. His jurisdiction is specifically the Discworld itself; he being only a minion of Azrael, the Death of all things across the Universes — in much the same way as the Death of Rats is an infinitesimally small part of Death himself.
Pratchett explores human existence through his depiction of death, which became more sympathetic throughout the series as it progresses.
Death almost never kills anyone or anything[3] but — acting in the form of a psychopomp — he merely ensures that when lives comes to an end, they move on to where they believe they should go if they are sentient, which often involves a desert to be crossed.[4]
Death appears in every single Discworld novel — to greater or lesser degrees — except for The Wee Free Men and Snuff. In some of the novels, he is just a momentary humorous aside, whereas in others he has a more significant bearing on a plot point.
The character of Death evolves over the progression of the novels, developing more across the earlier books with his character gradually stabilising in later ones.
Death is the leading or an important central character in the following — in which he goes through significant character development — and these are considered to be the Death strand novels:
1987
1991
1994
1996
2001
The books represent Death's hollow, peculiar voice with unquoted ; as a skeleton, he has no vocal cords; and his words seem to enter the head without involving the ears. Pratchett wrote that his voice was like two slabs of granite rubbing together, or the slamming of coffin lids. These descriptions became frequent in later novels.
Death is not invisible, but most people's brains refuse to process who he is unless he insists. Generally, only magical people like witches and wizards, children, and cats can allow themselves to see him. Death can ignore things like walls because he is eternal and things that last mere centuries are not as real as he is. He can also adjust time for himself and others nearby.
Wizards, witches, and other significant figures like kings are collected by Death himself rather than by some lesser functionary such as a scrofula.[5] Death himself must collect some minimum number of souls, to keep the balance. His selection from ordinary deaths is worked out by a system called the "nodes" possibly based on the showiness of the death. A common thief incinerated by a dragon might qualify for example. He has shown up for at least two kittens, a swan, and a red flower-like sea creature. These events are usually of importance within the story, so Death's appearance may be considered a plot device. He sometimes appears for characters in mortal peril. Rincewind has seen him on numerous near-fatal occasions. Similarly, in Thud!, Vimes has a near-death experience, for which Death appears, sitting in a deckchair reading a mystery novel as he waits to see if Vimes will die.
He is fond of cats, who can see him at all times (he seems particularly furious when he once attends to a sack of drowned kittens), and curry, the consumption of which he describes as like biting a red-hot ice cube.[6] Being a skeleton with no digestive organs, it is not revealed how he is able to partake of food and drink. Anyone who dines with him tends to become extremely focused upon their own meal, and merely notices Death's plate being full one moment and empty the next. He occasionally smokes a pipe, with the smoke drifting out of his eye sockets. He pays for goods and services with an assortment of copper coins, many turned blue or green with age, which he says he acquired .
Death is fascinated by humanity. His interest is coupled with bafflement: it's a favorite point of Pratchett's that the habits and beliefs that are grown into instead of being rationally acquired are an essential part of being human. As Death is an outside observer, his imitations of humanity are intricate but marked by a fundamental lack of comprehension. When acting as a stand-in for the Hogfather (a figure similar to Santa Claus) he starts by greeting the children with from force of habit until reminded not to do so. He is especially intrigued by humanity's ability to complicate their own existence, and their ability to actually get up in the morning without going insane from the sheer prospect of what life entails (from his perspective).
This fascination with humanity extends to the point of sympathy towards them, and he will often side with humans against greater threats, notably the Auditors of Reality. He has on a number of occasions bent the rules to allow a character extra life (e.g., the little girl rescued from the fire in Reaper Man, or the Little Match Girl in Hogfather). Death has also indicated that he will oblige dying humans by playing a game with them for their lives, much like the personification of Death in The Seventh Seal; the games he offers include chess, though he consistently has trouble remembering how the knights move, and another game (referred to by Death as "Exclusive Possession" in the book, presumably based on Monopoly), which the challenger lost despite having "three streets and all the utilities".[7] Granny Weatherwax was able to play cards against Death in a successful bid to save a child's life, Granny's hand having four queens while Death's had only four "ones". (A hand of four aces would generally beat a hand of queens in poker, but Death chose to consider them low, giving the old witch a "wink" in the process.)[8]
In the same way that his granddaughter, Susan, has been described as "Helpfulness Personified"[9] in terms of her personality, Death, by his own admission, could very well be described as 'Duty Personified' in terms of personality; in Hogfather, in a discussion with Albert, Death comments He does not cause people to die, nor does he concern himself with their goodness or badness in life; it is simply his job to collect their souls at the appointed time.
In many ways, he epitomizes the bleakness of human existence. In Reaper Man, in which he is rendered temporarily mortal (or at least the imagination of being mortal, since his state of being "it/death" is, as mentioned in Discworld Noir, constant), he becomes frustrated and infuriated with the unfair inevitability of death, a theme that continues through later books. In Soul Music he expresses misery at the fact that he is capable of preventing deaths but is forbidden to do so; during his time as the Hogfather, he uses his new dual role to save a little match girl from dying of the cold by employing a loophole through giving her the gift of a future, thus allowing him to avoid the usual complications that arise from his breaking the rules. Despite his general lack of emotion, the Auditors of Reality are one of the few things actually capable of angering him. He also gets angry upon hearing of Rincewind: In Eric, for example, his eyes turn red at the mention of Rincewind. Pratchett even says in The Art of Discworld that he has received a number of letters from terminally ill fans in which they hope that Death will resemble the Discworld incarnation (he also says that those particular letters usually cause him to spend some time staring at the wall).
Death has developed considerably since his first appearance in The Colour of Magic. In this, he was quite a malicious character and followed Rincewind around wanting him to die after circumstances resulted in Rincewind missing his scheduled appointment. At one point he even deliberately stops a character's heart, though later in the book it was shown to have been the actions of Death's stand-in, Scrofula. By the time of Mort he had gained the sympathetic and humorous personality he has in later books. In later novels he has been used to examine developments in theoretical physics as, being supernatural, he is able to witness such events firsthand although, being a cat lover, he is not fond of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, believing it cruel to the cats involved.
Death resides in an extra-dimensional realm called Death's Domain. His home there is a Victorian house with a well-tended garden in shades of black and a skull and crossbones motif. Its name, "Mon Repos", (Quirmian means "my rest"), and is much larger inside than outside. Death hasn't mastered scale. He doesn't understand real distance or perspective either, so its surroundings are blurred and seem distant. Death adds a large golden wheat field to the grounds after the events of Reaper Man. A tree swing he built for his granddaughter Susan, swings through the trunk of the tree.
The doors reach a height of several yards yet are only a few feet tall. He has a bathroom which he never uses, with a bar of bone-white, rock-hard soap and a towel rack with hard towels. Death's house is full of cats. He also sends cats to Heaven[10] where Maurice encounters Death.
Plumbing confuses him, and the pipes are completely solid. He didn't know that towels were soft and should be foldable. He never sleeps and has a violin he tries to play. He notes in Soul Music that he can only play "an empty chord," the sound made at the end of everything to signify no more sound.
The initial books did not pronounce themselves about the sex of Death, although Ysabell called him 'Daddy', using the pronoun "it". In Mort Death's pronoun is given as "he" and "his" without the special capital as in the earlier books. In Reaper Man, Death is unambiguously identified as a male, and in Soul Music and Hogfather Susan calls him her grandfather or "Granddad". When asked to describe Death, in the second Discworld computer game, the protagonist Rincewind hazards a guess, "Well, I suppose he's a man. You have to look at the pelvis, don't you?" In the comic strip adaptation of Mort, Death is seen in mirrors as a black-bearded human wearing a black cloak, a look he takes when he needs to be seen by the living.
Many languages must provide a grammatical gender to each object, and 'death' is often a feminine noun. As such, translations of early novels sometimes refer to Death as a woman. This is generally changed, by the time of Reaper Man. Also, the personification of Death varies from country to country leading to further confusion; for example the Russian personification is that of an old woman, while the Czech version uses for his name a normally nonexistent masculine variant of the feminine word for death. Explanations are given in footnotes, often with a pun.[11]
Death is both the servant and a part of The Old High One known as Azrael, the Death of Universes and ruler of all deaths.
In earlier books and also Thief of Time Death works with War, Pestilence, and Famine, three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like him they have grown more human than required. "Form defines function," Death explains in Thief of Time. Kaos, the Fifth Horseman, left the group before it became famous to work as a milkman under the name Ronnie Soak. In Thief of Time he reunites with the other Horsemen.
"Mort", short for Mortimer[12] is the title character in Mort, first seen as the over-thoughtful son of a farmer in the Octarine Grass Country near the Ramtops. Having proven unworthy as a scarecrow, he was chosen by Death as an apprentice. Mort's father consented, mistaking Death for an undertaker. Mort is described as being very tall and skinny, with muscles like knots in string and a shock of bright red hair. He walks like he is entirely made of knees.
Mort learns to accept his position mucking out the stables, trying to ignore Ysabell, Death's adopted daughter. When Death feels in need of a break, Mort takes over The Duty. Unfortunately his feelings for the teenage princess of Sto Lat interfere and he impulsively prevents her assassination, starting a chain reaction of events. Reluctant to tell Death about his gaffe, Mort tries unsuccessfully to fix the situation. After fighting Death and losing Mort gets an extra lease on life when the Grim Reaper chooses to turn his Lifetimer over, allowing Mort additional time in the world of the living.
Mort leaves Death's service and marries Ysabell. The couple are given the titles of Duke and Duchess of Sto Helit, and become the parents of Susan Sto Helit. A freak accident sends their carriage plunging into a ravine in Soul Music. They had turned down Death's offer to extend their existence by letting them stay in his domain, on the grounds that it would not actually be longer life.
In The Light Fantastic, Rincewind hears Twoflower teaching the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death, Famine, Pestilence and War) to play bridge. At one point, War calls Death "Mort". The name might be why Death chose Mort.
In the Cosgrove Hall Films animation of Soul Music, Mort is voiced by Neil Morrissey. In 2004 BBC Radio 4 adapted Mort, with the title character voiced by Carl Prekopp and Ysabell being voiced by Clare Corbett. Mort is included in Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy.
Ysabell is the adopted daughter of Death, who saved her as a baby when her parents were killed in the Great Nef desert (no explanation has been given as to why he did this; Ysabell said that "He didn't feel sorry for me, he never feels anything. ... He probably thought sorry for me."). When first encountered she was a sixteen-year-old girl with silver hair and silver eyes who, it transpires, has been sixteen for thirty-five Discworld 'years', since no time passes in Death's Domain. In her encounter with Rincewind (see below), her behaviour is sufficiently flamboyant to make him believe she is "bonkers". When Mort first encountered Ysabell, he got the impression of "too many chocolates" (though Pratchett notes that he would have described her as "Pre-Raphaelite" if he had ever heard the word). She also has a fixation on the colour pink.
Ysabell first appeared in The Light Fantastic, where she met Rincewind, and was surprised to learn that he was not actually dead. This state of affairs might not have continued long if the Luggage had not intervened. During the events of Mort it became clear that Ysabell was competent to carry out the work of her father including The Duty and 'doing the nodes'. This mainly involved figuring out which deaths needed to be attended to personally, an important aspect of all reality. Before Mort arrived she shared her home with Albert, Death's manservant.
See main article: Susan Sto Helit. Susan Sto Helit was Mort and Ysabell's daughter and only child. When she first appeared as a schoolgirl in Soul Music, Susan had, at age sixteen, just inherited the duchy on the death of her parents. During her upbringing, her parents had hidden her background from her and brought her up to be logical, so it comes as a shock when the Death of Rats and Quoth the Raven come looking for her. She had to act as a stand-in for Death when he disappeared, but subsequently returned to her education. Although she inherited all of her grandfather's abilities, she longed to be normal, and got human jobs, first as a governess in Hogfather, and then as a schoolteacher in Thief of Time. Death constantly dragged her back into his world. At the end of Thief of Time, she begins a relationship with Lobsang Ludd, the anthropomorphic personification of Time.
Albert (originally known as Alberto Malich), Death's manservant, butler, and cook, was once a wizard and founder of Unseen University; he attempted to gain immortality by reciting the Rite of AshkEnte (a ritual to summon Death) backwards, believing this would force Death to stay away from him. Instead it brought him directly to Death's Domain. Since time in Death's Domain does not flow in the same way as it does on the Discworld, Albert succeeded, in a way, in gaining immortality. Before he returned to the world in Mort, "Albert" had 91 days, three hours and five minutes of time left on the Disc, most of which he spent shopping and using the soap and baths at the "Young Men's Reformed Cultist of the Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth's Association" (Death is not very good at plumbing). After Soul Music, he had only a few seconds left, and could no longer leave Death's Domain. Albert was a highly idiosyncratic cook, who believed everything needed to be fried to get rid of the germs, including porridge.
Albert's childhood was touched upon lightly in Hogfather. He came from a very poor family, even by the standards of Ankh-Morpork. This novel also suggested that he was fond of pork pies with mustard and sherry.
A statue of Alberto in a hallway of Unseen University was inscribed (apart from the usual student scribbles) with "We Shall Not See His Like Again." This turned out to be entirely wrong. After the statue was destroyed in Mort, the wizards believed that the returned Albert was the statue, and it was suggested that a new one be built in a very secure place—such as the dungeon, allegedly to prevent it being defiled by students. Alberto Malich was a powerful wizard, perhaps the most powerful a wizard could be. This was why he so easily devised a spell to slow the passage of time indefinitely around a small area, a near-impossible feat with Discworld magic.
When Death went missing in Soul Music, Albert tried to find him on the Disc, but got robbed and his life-timer was broken. After this incident, Albert had approximately 34 seconds left, and thus could no longer return to the world of the living, as Death cannot make his life longer. The remaining sand was kept in a bottle in Albert's bedroom. Albert was able to temporarily return to the Discworld during the events of Hogfather, although merely in the pseudo-reality that allowed the Hogfather to travel around the entire world in a single night, and hence not actually in the world, strictly speaking.
While Death and Albert got on rather well, it was a fragile relationship. In Mort, Albert returned to the world to help Death, but seemed ready to attack him when it looked like he had his former job as Archchancellor back. He also seemed not to trust Death with his life-timer, and took it with him in Soul Music, although Death later reflected that the action was pointless, as he would never have done anything to it. Albert frequently found himself trying to keep Death "on course" when his master became too human. He and Susan did not get on very well.
Binky is Death's steed, so named by Death because it is "a nice name". He is a living horse; Death tried a skeletal steed, but kept having to "stop and wire bits back on". Death also tried a fiery steed, but it repeatedly set his barn and his robe on fire.
Binky is rather more intelligent than most horses and is pure, milky white.[13] He can fly by just creating his own ground-level, and travel through time and across dimensions, sometimes leaving glowing hoofprints in his wake, but in all other respects is a perfectly ordinary horse. He is well-treated, and loyal to his master and Susan. He was shoed by Jason Ogg, a Lancrastian blacksmith of mythical skill.[14] Binky is not immortal, but while in Death's service does not age.[15] Binky gained some of his powers by sharing one of Death's qualities: being so much "realer" than ordinary things such as walls, great distances, or time that he can simply ignore them.
Death gave Susan a "My Little Binky" gift set for her third birthday. It was returned by her parents, who feared that it would make her a less "normal" child.
The Death of Rats, also known as the Grim Squeaker, was not, strictly speaking, a personification in his own right but rather an aspect of Death, allowed an independent existence. His purpose was to usher on the souls of dead rodents, and assist Death in other ways. His jurisdiction also seems to cover certain kinds of "ratty" humans, such as Mr. Clete in Soul Music, Mr. Pin in The Truth, and Mr. Pounder in Maskerade.
He was one of a disparate multitude of death-personifications created during Death's absence in Reaper Man. The Death of Rats refused to be reabsorbed into Death himself upon the latter's resumption of his duties, and Death kept him around for company. The Death of Fleas also escaped resorption, but was not seen after Reaper Man. The Death of Rats resembles a rodentine skeleton walking on its hind legs, wearing a black robe, and carrying a tiny scythe, since his form took shape from the latent form of Death in Reaper Man, and he came into existence in the vicinity of Bill Door.
The Death of Rats finds ways around the rules more easily than Death, and assisted Susan in Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time. He sometimes travels with a talking raven named Quoth, who acts as his translator.
The Death of Rats, like Death, speaks in, but has a vocabulary consisting of words such as , and when he laughs, although his speech could be interpreted from context like the Librarian's.
In the mythology of the Changeling Clan in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents the Death of Rats was known as the Bone Rat.
Quoth is a talking raven who accompanies the Death of Rats. He was named Quoth by his previous owner, a wizard with no sense of humour attempting to make a joke by referencing the famous line in "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe – but Quoth refused to give in to this stereotype by saying "the N word" (Nevermore). At times he acts as steed and interpreter for the Death of Rats. He has a constant craving for eyeballs and frequently (and hopefully) mistakes various other small round objects for eyeballs, such as olives and walnuts. He was originally one of the ravens from the Tower of Art, the magical properties of which gave him his ability to speak.
He was first seen in Soul Music, then appeared in all novels involving Susan Sto Helit. Neil Pearson voiced him in the Sky One adaptation of Hogfather.
The New Death appeared in Reaper Man when he came to collect the old Death, then known as "Bill Door". The New Death was the old Death's replacement as a result of the plot by the Auditors to rid the world of sloppy thinking.
The New Death came from human belief, but was quite different from the original, having been formed by modern Discworlders who thought of death as malevolent rather than a simple cessation of life. Though he had the usual black robe, he was larger and had only smoke beneath his robe rather than bones, and wore a crown to the disgust of the original Death. He rode the classic skeletal steed, in contrast to the special but very real Binky. Instead of a scythe he wielded a weapon "which may, at some point in its evolution, have incorporated aspects of a scythe, in the same way a scalpel incorporated aspects of a stick". In place of a face or skull, the new Death had just a crown and was prideful, dramatic, cold, and cruel, the literal embodiment of humanity's fear of death. He chose to arrive exactly at midnight and appeared in a flash of lightning purely for the dramatic effect, which the old Death found degrading and rather excessive. When he cornered Bill Door, he mocked and beat him instead of finishing the job.
The new Death was destroyed by Bill Door using the scythe he used on the farm; a humble garden tool, not the infinitely sharp implement of Death, but sharpened by his rage and the harvest. Bill Door was disgusted and horrified by the New Death's callous attitude toward humanity, and his victory is the triumph of the compassionate "reaper man" over a tyrant who has no care for the harvest.
The Rite of AshkEnte (also Ashk'Ente or Ash'Kente) was an ancient magic ritual that summoned and bound Death in a circle and prevented him from leaving until invited to do so by the summoning wizard. This may have been wishful thinking on the part of the wizards as, in Eric, Death appeared outside the circle, behind the wizards, and in Reaper Man a wizard commented that he believed Death only stayed in the circle for the look of the thing. The Rite is not tuned to Death himself, but rather to whoever happened to be performing his duties; Mort (then Death's apprentice) was almost forced to respond to the summons, and Susan Sto Helit (his granddaughter) was summoned and subsequently bound. The rite does not appear to apply to Death himself, although he may just appear out of politeness.
Since Death was professionally involved in almost everything going on everywhere, the Rite was usually performed to question him on otherwise inexplicable phenomena. This was usually done only when all other avenues were exhausted, as most powerful wizards were quite old and therefore unwilling to attract the attention of Death. Death hated being summoned, because he was always summoned at the "worst possible time", such as when at a party.
The Rite also caused Albert's affiliation with Death; while he was still Archchancellor of Unseen University, Albert attempted to become immortal by performing the Rite backwards, reasoning that this would banish Death from him, but instead it transferred Albert to Death's realm, where he decided to remain on the grounds that time did not pass in Death's realm and he was thus essentially immortal.
There were twelve ways to perform the Rite, but eight of them caused instant death, and might summon Death in the "usual" manner, and the ninth is very hard to remember. This left three ways to safely summon death: Although the Rite could be performed by a couple of people with three small sticks and 4 cc of mouse blood, or even with a fresh egg and only two small sticks, the wizards (Ridcully excepted) preferred to do it the old fashioned way, with heavy equipment consisting of numerous drippy candles, octograms on the floor, thuribles, and similar paraphernalia. They felt it was not "proper" wizardry if it wasn't showy enough.
The Rite has been used several times In the Discworld books:
In the 2022 international co-production CGI-animated film of The Amazing Maurice — adapted fairly directly from the 28th Discworld novel of 2001, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents — Death is voiced by the noted British actor and comedian Peter Serafinowicz alongside Hugh Laurie as the titular cat of equally prodigious capabilities.
In the Cosgrove Hall 1997 animated adaptations of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters (and the Welcome to the Discworld pilot based on a extract from Reaper Man), Death was voiced by Christopher Lee. In Soul Music – Albert was voiced by Brian Pringle – Susan Sto-Helit was voiced by Debra Gillett – Mort was voiced by Neil Morrissey – Ysabell was voiced by Melissa Sinden – it is not stated who voiced Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats.
In the 2006 Sky One adaptation of Hogfather he was voiced by Ian Richardson. The actor who played the physical Death in Hogfather was Marnix van den Broeke, a 6-foot 7 inch tall Dutchman.
In the 2008 adaptation of The Colour of Magic, van den Broeke reprised the physical role, with Christopher Lee returning to the voice after the death of Richardson.
In the 2021 series The Watch, Wendell Pierce voiced Death.
Death has been voiced in all five BBC Radio adaptations of Discworld novels. Geoffrey Whitehead played the part in the adaptation of Mort, and also in Episode 1 of Eric. John Rowe played him in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and Michael Kilgarriff voiced Death in Episode 4 of Small Gods. In both Guards! Guards! and Wyrd Sisters, Death is credited as being played by himself (In Guards! Guards! he is actually voiced by Stephen Thorne who also played Sergeant Colon).
Death has appeared in various other media: in the Discworld Game Series he is voiced firstly by Rob Brydon and later by Nigel Planer.
Death has also been played by numerous actors in amateur stage productions of Wyrd Sisters, Mort, Soul Music, and Hogfather, as well as various other plays based on the novels.
After his death in March 2015, Pratchett's daughter Rhianna wrote in three tweets from her father's Twitter account:
Fans launched a tongue-in-cheek petition on Change.org, requesting for Death to return Pratchett to life because, "Terry Pratchett turned Death from a figure of hate into a much loved and sometimes welcomed character. No-one else cared about you Death. You owe him!"[16]
The Death of Rats appeared in the animated Soul Music and the radio play The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, but no voice credit was given for either. In the Hogfather TV series the voice was credited to Dorckey Hellmice (an anagram of Michelle Dockery who played Susan Sto Helit in the same TV series), while in the Discworld 2 game, the voice is credited as Katherine the Crocodile. The Death of Rats also appears in Discworld Noir.
In Cosgrove Hall's 1996 animated Soul Music, Albert was voiced by Bryan Pringle. In BBC Radio 4's 2004 adaptation of Mort, he was voiced by Philip Jackson.
In Sky One's live-action version of Hogfather, Albert was played by David Jason.
Albert also makes an appearance in the computer game , voiced by Nigel Planer.