Everyman

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1485

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Character Analysis

Themes

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Themes

Death and Reckoning

The central themes of Everyman are announced in the play’s title page, which introduces the work as a “treatise how the High Father of Heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world […] in manner of a moral play” (1). These themes of death, reckoning, and salvation are further explored by the Messenger and later by God himself, both of whom deliver speeches at the beginning of the play that bemoan the reckoning or final judgment that human beings must face when they die. Death himself is soon brought on stage as a personified or allegorical character.

As God observes at the beginning of the play, human beings live their lives “without dread in worldly prosperity” (24)—that is, without thinking of their deaths and preparing for the judgment they will face when they die. Indeed, when Death arrives to bring Everyman to his reckoning, he notes that “full little he thinketh on my coming” (81). In forgetting Death, human beings also forget God, as Death brings humans to the eternal realm of God (or to hell). The coming of Death highlights the transience of human life. Death comes for everybody and cannot be evaded, delayed, or bribed, as Everyman learns: Even God, in Christian teaching, “suffered to be dead” when he perished on the cross as Jesus Christ (32). The fruits of sin—including the pursuit of earthly wealth and pleasure—are as transient as life, not least because Christianity teaches that death itself is the consequence of humanity’s original sin.

Throughout the play, Death becomes a kind of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage to sacred places was extremely important in the Christian world of medieval/early modern Europe. Such pilgrimages, which the church strongly encouraged, were often connected with repentance and were thought to bring about the healing of the soul as well as the body. In Everyman, this practice is reworked as a pilgrimage to the grave and ultimately to heaven.

This allegorical pilgrimage, like the pilgrimages of the medieval world, brings Everyman to his reckoning with God and thus to repentance and the salvation of his eternal soul. As he sets out, Everyman must bring his ledger, his “book of count” (104), which shows how he spent his life on earth, for this is what God will use to judge him. He may also bring any companions who will follow him. As Everyman will learn, none of his friends—Fellowship, Kinship, Goods, and so on—can accompany on his journey: Only Good Deeds, which Everyman has neglected in life, can accompany him in death. In this way, Everyman learns what is truly valuable as Death brings him to his reckoning.

Sin and Repentance

As Everyman faces Death and makes his pilgrimage to his reckoning with God, he must repent for the sins he committed during his life. This is the only way for him to achieve the salvation of his eternal soul. When Everyman is first introduced, he is an average sinner, thinking only of acquiring worldly wealth while neglecting God and Christian living. His “book of count” (104), as he tells Death, is “full unready”; when he first turns to Good Deeds, he finds her literally buried beneath his sins and thus unable to move, much less accompany him to his reckoning.

By forgetting that material, earthly wealth is as transient as life, Everyman has allowed himself to be seduced by sin—particularly the sin of greed. Instead of cultivating Good Deeds, Everyman has pursued Goods. However, Goods cannot accompany him beyond the grave. Indeed, as Goods himself tells Everyman, the love of Goods “is contrary to the love everlasting” (430). Just like Goods, the other “friends” that Everyman valued in life—Fellowship and Kinship—show their true worth when they abandon Everyman, reneging on their promises always to stand by his side. Everyman thus learns the lesson prefaced in the beginning of the play by the Messenger, who cautions the audience:

Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet,

Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep,

When the body lieth in clay (13-15).

Only Good Deeds can accompany Everyman to his grave, but she is too weak to do so because Everyman has shamelessly neglected her in his incorrigible pursuit of earthly prosperity and sin. However, Everyman is not doomed because of his past transgressions: As Knowledge shows him, he can atone for his sinful life by visiting Confession and scourging himself. It is Everyman’s repentance that restores Good Deeds’ ability to walk. And after Everyman goes to Priesthood to receive the sacrament and extreme unction, it is Good Deeds alone who enters the grave with him, Everyman’s earthly companions having forsaken him and inspiring Everyman at last to renounce them. Indeed, as Good Deeds points out:

All earthly things is but vanity:

Beauty, Strength, and Discretion, do man forsake,

Foolish friends and kinsmen, that fair spake,

All fleeth save Good-Deeds, and that am I (870-73).

Having grasped this lesson at last, Everman faces his reckoning, achieving the salvation of his eternal soul and gaining entrance into Heaven.

The Earthly Versus the Eternal

Everyman’s progression toward repentance, reckoning, and ultimately salvation represents a movement from the earthly realm to the eternal realm. Everyman has lived his life valuing earthly pursuits and neglecting the wellbeing of his eternal soul. As he faces his reckoning, however, he is forced to repent. In renouncing his previous earthly connections, Everyman finally recognizes the true value of God’s eternal domain and wins entry into Heaven.

At the beginning of the play, God is angry at humans for thinking only of the earthly, transient realm and neglecting spiritual matters. Human beings, he says, pursue wealth and pleasure and forget what they owe to the eternal God. “Drowned in sin,” God rages, “they know me not for their God; / In worldly riches is all their mind” (26-27). As a result, human beings such as Everyman are not ready to face their reckoning when Death comes for them. As Everyman will find, only Good Deeds can accompany him beyond the grave, for Good Deeds alone belongs to the eternal realm of God. Fellowship, Kinship, Goods, and all of Everyman’s other preoccupations forsake him, belonging as they do only to the transient earthly realm.

The overarching juxtaposition between the earthly and the eternal reveals itself through numerous supporting juxtapositions: life/death, body/soul, God/man, etc. Moreover, in exploring the juxtaposition between the earthly and the eternal, the play employs a ring structure, beginning in the eternal realm with God’s opening speech before moving into the earthly realm as Everyman prepares for his reckoning and finally ending in the eternal realm once again as the Angel enters to confirm that Everyman has been admitted into heaven. A conflict thus emerges between “worldly prosperity” and the eternal realm of God. As Goods tells Everyman, love of him is tantamount to “damnation without lesing” (429), being as it is “contrary to the love everlasting” (430).

The eternal realm embraces heaven but also hell. By traveling the path of repentance, Everyman achieves a “clear” reckoning and is ultimately granted entry to heaven. However, those who have not repented their misdeeds will find themselves thrust into the fires of hell, as the Doctor warns in the final lines of the play, will be condemned to Hell: