Death (Discworld) - Character

Character

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 the words enter the head with no involvement from the ears. His "voice" is often described using a morbid metaphor, such as two concrete blocks being rubbed together, or the slamming of coffin lids; these descriptions have become less frequent in recent novels. In the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, as well as in Eric, all direct written references to Death are proper nouns; 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 or magic spells; he exists through all time, and therefore things lasting merely centuries are not as real as he is. He can only go where people believe in death and can only see people who can die. 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. However, 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 an incredibly small sea creature (possibly a tube worm). 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 The Fifth Elephant 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.

Death has appeared in every Discworld novel, except for 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).

He is fond of cats, who can see him at all times, and curry, the consumption of which is described by Death as like biting a red-hot ice cube.

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 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). 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". 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.)

In the same way that his granddaughter, Susan, has been described as "Helpfulness Personified" 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 commented that, If I had a first name, 'Duty' would be my middle name.

In many ways, he is a character who epitomises 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. 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). Terry 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 follows Rincewind around wanting him to die after circumstances resulted in Rincewind 'missing' their scheduled 'appointment'. At one point he deliberately stops a character's heart, though this may have been Death's stand-in, Scrofula. By the time of Mort he had gained the sympathetic and humorous personality he has in later books. In more recent novels, he has been used to examine recent 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.