Death (Discworld)

Death has appeared in every Discworld novel, with the exception of The Wee Free Men and Snuff, and had a possible cameo at the end of Johnny and the Dead (the character was not identified, but spoke in unquoted small caps as Death does in the rest of the series). The Discworld books in which Death is a leading character, starting with Mort in 1987, are:

• Mort – 1987
• Reaper Man – 1991
• Soul Music – 1994
• Hogfather – 1996
• Thief of Time – 2001

Death's hollow, peculiar voice is represented in the books by unquoted small caps; since he is a skeleton, he has no vocal cords to speak with, and therefore his words enter a person's head with no involvement from the ears. His "voice" is often described using a morbid metaphor, such as two slabs of granite being rubbed together, or the slamming of coffin lids; these descriptions have become less frequent in later novels. In the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, as well as in Eric, all pronouns referring to Death are capitalized; thus, for example, "he" is written as "He". This is usually reserved for the Discworld gods and is not featured in any of the other novels.

Death is not invisible; however, most people's brains refuse to acknowledge him for who he is, unless he insists. Under normal circumstances, only those of a magical disposition (e.g. witches and wizards), children, and cats can see him, or allow themselves to see him. Due to his eternal nature, Death can ignore such things as walls and magic spells; he exists throughout all time, so things lasting merely centuries are not as real as he is. He can adjust time with regard to himself and others near him, completing tasks very rapidly from a normal perspective.[1] He can only go where people believe in death[2] and can only see people who can die.[3] In this sense, he is similar to the gods of the Discworld, in that he is powered by mortals' collective belief in him.

Wizards, witches, and significant figures such as kings have the prerogative of being collected by Death himself, rather than one of the lesser entities. Most other souls are collected by another functionary, such as the anthropomorphic personification of scrofula.[4] Death himself must collect some minimum number of souls, worked out by a system called the "nodes", in order to keep the momentum of dying going. His selection of ordinary deaths may be based on the showiness of the death, such as a common thief being incinerated by a dragon. In addition to wizards and kings, he has shown up for numerous ordinary people, at least two dogs, 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 simply be considered a plot device. He has also appeared in situations where characters are in mortal peril; for example, Death has appeared before Rincewind on numerous nearly-fatal occasions. Similarly, in Thud! Samuel Vimes has a near-death experience, which means that Death has a corresponding "near-Vimes experience", in which he appears before the stricken Vimes sitting in a deckchair reading a mystery novel.

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.[1] 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 In pairs.

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 Cower, brief mortals 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".[5] 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.)[6]

In the same way that his granddaughter, Susan, has been described as "Helpfulness Personified"[7] 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 If I had a first name, 'Duty' would be my middle name. 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 him "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 within the domain looks like a Victorian house with a garden that is well-tended, but is predominantly in shades of black and decorated with a skull and crossbones motif. It is called "Mon Repos", (Quirmian for "my place of rest"), and is much larger on the inside, because Death has not quite mastered the art of scale. Similarly, because he does not quite understand real distance compared to perspective, the surrounding terrain is actually relatively close, but blurred to appear farther away. Death adds a large golden wheat field to the grounds after the events of Reaper Man. There is also a tree swing, created by Death for his granddaughter Susan, which swings through the trunk of the tree.

In addition to the inside of the house being larger than the outside, there are doors that reach a height of several yards and at the same time 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 attached to it. The only usable items in the bathroom are a small bar of regular soap and one normal towel, both brought there by his manservant Albert.

The plumbing of his house has greatly confused him, and in Death's Domain it is explained that the pipes are completely solid, as is the u-bend for the floral-decorated toilet. The towels he originally constructed are also useless; he did not realize that they had to bend, fold and be soft. In his 'bedroom' (which he never actually sleeps in), he has a violin, which he attempts to play. As with everything in his domain, he cannot create, only mimic, so he creates a racket, instead of music. He does note in Soul Music that the only piece he can play that could be remotely considered music is "an empty chord," and is the sound made at the end of everything to signify that no more sound will be made. This is said to greatly frustrate him.

Furthermore, Death's house is full of cats, roaming around. Moreover, he is also responsible for sending cats to Heaven as mentioned in "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" where Maurice encounters Death himself.

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.[8]

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 the earlier books and in Thief of Time Death works with War, Pestilence, and Famine, three other Horsemen of the Apocralypse. Like him they have become more human than their roles require. Death himself explains this in Thief of Time by saying that "form defines function." In Thief of Time they are reunited with Kaos, the Fifth Horseman, who had previously left before the group became famous and now works as a milkman under the name Ronnie Soak. With the exception of Thief of Time, the other Horsemen do not generally appear in the books focused on Death.

The Rite of AshkEnte (also Ashk'Ente or Ash'Kente) is the ancient magic ritual that summons and binds Death into a circle and prevents him from leaving until invited to do so by the summoning wizard. This may be wishful thinking on the part of the wizards as, in Eric, Death appears outside the circle, behind the wizards, and in Reaper Man a wizard comments that he believes Death only stays in the circle for the look of the thing. The Rite is not tuned to Death himself, but rather whoever happened to be doing the job; 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 is professionally involved in almost everything that is going on everywhere, the Rite is usually performed so that he can be questioned on otherwise inexplicable phenomena. This is usually done only when all other avenues have been exhausted as most powerful wizards are quite old and therefore unwilling to attract the attention of Death. Death hates being summoned because he is always summoned at the "worst possible time", such as when he is at a party.

The Rite is also the reason for 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 away 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 is thus essentially immortal.

There are twelve ways of performing the Rite, but eight of them cause instant death, and so might just be considered to summon Death in the "usual" manner, and the ninth is very hard to remember.[10] This leaves three ways to safely summon death: Although the Rite can 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) prefer to do it the old fashioned way, with heavy equipment consisting of numerous drippy candles, octograms written on the floor, thuribles, and similar paraphernalia. They feel it's not "proper" wizardry if it's not showy enough.

In the Discworld books, the Rite has been used several times:

• In The Light Fantastic, Death was summoned to be asked about the recent mass wave of magic that had apparently done nothing, revealing that the Octavo had taken action to prevent the eighth spell dropping off the Disc so that all eight spells could be used to prevent the imminent destruction of the world. Death later returned to collect one of the high ranking wizards present at the Rite as his time had run out. (The wizard, realising his time was near, locked himself in a room sealed both magically and physically against all ills. In a later book, it is noted doing so probably makes you more likely to be found by Death.)
• In Mort, Albert, briefly returned to the world, summoned Death, who was having a holiday, to let him know that Mort, his apprentice, was doing a terrible job as replacement. While the Rite was being performed, it almost summoned Mort instead.
• In Eric, Death was asked about an occult disturbance that turned out to be Rincewind. On this occasion, Death appeared outside of the binding octogram, walking into it only at the insistence of the gathered wizards.
• In Reaper Man, when Death had been forced to retire by the Auditors, an Auditor appeared in Death's place to inform the wizards about the situation and, when they asked about the sudden abundance of life force, assuring them that 'normal service' would resume shortly.
• In Soul Music, when Death had again taken a break from work, the Rite instead summoned his granddaughter Susan, who was filling in.
• The Rite is also used in the computer game Discworld 2. The game requires the player to find not only the three small sticks (of equal length) and 4 cc of mouse blood mentioned above, but also dribbly candles, a vile stench, and some glitter. During the ritual, the wizards perform an off-key version of "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)" and Death appears behind them, fresh from vacation, wearing a cork hat.

• Death (DC Comics), another fictional Death with sympaphetic traits
• List of death deities
• Psychopomp
• Azrael
• Thanatos
• Pale Horseman, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, also named Thanatos
• Charon

• Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
• Deaths reading order - A guide to Deaths story arc.