Memento Mori on the disc.

Terry Pratchett's accidental lesson in confronting death

I am currently working my way through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. For the uninitiated: the Disc is a flat world with a perpetual waterfall off its edges, that sits on the backs of four elephants who ride on the great space-turtle, Atuin’s, shell as it swims through space. If this all sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. Pratchett was a humorist and satirist, whose stories are absurd on the surface but cuttingly clever if you take a second look. The Disc is home to wizards, mailmen, dragons, con artists, and worst of all, bureaucrats and politicians. The main character of one book might make a small appearance in the background of another book, but there is no true main character in the entire series.

With that summary out of the way, I’d like to get down to my favorite character: Death.

Yes, that’s right. Death is a recurring character who appears in most of the books, which makes sense because he turns up every time someone, well, dies. He looks like the Grim Reaper with a skeletal head, black cloak, and scythe. His speech is always stylized in small caps so that his voice is instantly recognizable even in print.

Upon Pratchett’s death in 2015, his official Twitter was updated to the following:

This was a touching announcement of Pratchett’s death, presenting him as one of his own characters, being led by Death into whatever came next. Pratchett had spent years portraying Death as a pretty normal guy who admittedly doesn’t understand human emotions but is generally just doing his job. He’s just there to walk people to the afterlife. He tends to bees and his athenaeum of hourglasses (one for every living thing on the Disc). He has staff in his home who he treats well, and he’s affectionate toward his horse. He even looks after a human girl who calls him father. In every opportunity that Pratchett could have made Death scary and eldritch, he went in the opposite direction. Characters are afraid to meet Death but generally find he’s quite neutral in his judgment of human affairs. He’s known to taunt or play pranks on humans now and again, but he doesn’t enjoy suffering. In fact, there's an entire book in which Death experiences the human condition. This is not a scary entity. He’s just maintaining order and making sure souls get where they need to go. He’s not the problem. He’s the problem’s secretary.

Of course, given my love of the practice of memento mori, I was immediately in love with Pratchett’s representation. Admittedly, Pratchett was vocally atheist. His representation of Death was not intended in a Christian way, however, I still think he got a few things right. There is no guile or malice in Death. He’s just a fact of nature. I offer that if Death is the secretary, then the problem is sin.

Saint John Chrysostom said, in a homily:

For this is a childish terror of ours, if we fear death, but are not fearful of sin. Little children too are afraid of masks, but fear not the fire. On the contrary, if they are carried by accident near a lighted candle, they stretch out the hand without any concern towards the candle and the flame . . . Just so we too have a fear of death . . . but have no fear of sin . . . so that if we were once to consider what death is, we should at no time be afraid of it. What then, I pray you, is death? Just what it is to put off a garment. For the body is about the soul as a garment; and after laying this aside for a short time by means of death, we shall resume it again with the more splendour. What is death at most? It is a journey for a season; a sleep longer than usual!

The quote is much longer, but I trimmed it for ease of reading.

If Terry Pratchett got one thing right in his portrayal of Death it is that we should not be afraid and that death does not undo the value of a life. When we do see that clocked skeletal figure coming our way, we can face it and say, “I knew you’d be coming eventually, and so I have prepared.”

Happy reading,

P.S. All the content on my Substack is free, but if you'd like to support me further, you can click below.