Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Tatiana Kňazeová
The Concept of Death in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.
2014
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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
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Author‟s signature 2
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….. 4
2. The Life of Sir Terry Pratchett ……………………………………………… 6
3. The End Game and Campaigning for Assisted Death ………………. 9
4. The Discworld and other Worlds …………………………………………… 13
5. The Discworld and Dying …………………………………………………….. 17
6. The Death of Discworld ……………………………………………………….. 23
7. Representation of Death ……………………………………………………… 29
8. The other Deaths ……………………………………………………………….. 37
9. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………. 41
10. Works Cited
a. Primary Sources ………………………………………………………… 44
b. Secondary Sources ……………………………………………………. 45
c. Video Sources …………………………………………………………… 48
Résumé in English ………………………………………………………………………… 49
Résumé in Czech ………………………………………………………………………….. 50
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1. Introduction
After having read more than 30 books written by Sir Terry Pratchett, both of the Discworld series and the series for children, it became quite clear that Sir
Terry is not just a favourite fantasy author of a few thousand people but an outstanding mastermind capable of creating imaginary worlds of incredible detail into which he has placed stories you can read over and over. What‟s more, every further reading uncovers another layer of humour and sarcastic commentaries of reality often hidden from unsuspecting readers.
Sir Terry Pratchett is the past, present and future of fantasy literature. His name is often being mentioned alongside of J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. Having written more than eighty books by December 2014 and assembling a fan base throughout the world he is no doubt one of the most successful authors of this age. Still, by some he is thought of as a children‟s author. Unfortunately, since the year 2007 when he was diagnosed with PCA, a rare form of Alzheimer‟s disease, the future of Discworld has been uncertain. Still, he continues to write and live his life to the fullest. It is a hope of many that he writes as many books as his health allows, for everyone hopes to read about their beloved characters at least one more book, and there are, indeed, many such characters.
The intention of this thesis is to look for connections between the life of Sir
Terry Pratchett, which is slowly but inevitably coming to an end, and depiction of
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the “final journey” in some of the Discworld novels. The main focus will be on one particular character, Death, recurrent in all of the Discworld novels (and some out of the series) (Lenz & Hunt 111). By now there have been five novels in which
Death took part as one of the main characters. Together they carry the name
“Death novels” and they are the following: Mort (1987), Reaper Man (1991), Soul
Music (1994), Hogfather (1996) and finally Thief of Time (2001). Death in
Discworld is personified. He is an “anthropomorphic personification”1 of death as the act of dying. It goes with the logic of Discworld that Death is depicted as one of the most humane characters. This work will also look at Death of Rats, the principles of dying and afterlife that apply in the Discworld and other characters who temporarily become “Death.”
Finally the thesis seeks to answer the questions of whether Death, the character, reflects Terry Pratchett‟s approach to mortality, what inspired the author to create Death as an “anthropomorphic personification” (and what they are), what were his goals and whether they were achieved. It also slightly touches different approaches of Discworld people(s) towards dying, afterlife and immortality by which Terry Pratchett poses as a mirror to current society so divided by the many religious beliefs.
1The term “anthropomorphic personification” is used to describe Death also in The new Discworld companion written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. It means a personification of a concept. 5
2. The Life of Sir Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett was born on 28 April 1948 in Beaconsfield,
Buckinghamshire, England. (Terry Pratchett biography) He started writing pretty young and grew up to become a journalist which, as he remembers in an interview named “Terry Pratchett: Shaking Hands with Death,” brought him in relatively frequent contact with suicide when reporting about it. He has a daughter
Rhianna, who will eventually inherit the opportunity to continue writing about
Discworld if she chooses to. Currently he lives with his wife Lyn in an idyllic manor house in a quiet Wiltshire village.
Since the year 2000 his personal assistant and a very good friend has been
Rob Wilkins, with whom they find deep interest in various technical gadgets that make life for Sir Terry a bit easier. With Rob they are “like boyhood friends, chatting about Alzheimer‟s as if it were a particularly difficult video-game level they are determined to conquer” (Penny 28) and in this way they beat the disease every day. Sir Terry has always been very much a technology geek as his daughter, Rhianna, lovingly remembers one of her first memories of how they used to play animated adventure games on his Sinclair ZX81 computer console
(produced in early 1980s). (Cable) Rhianna grew up to become a computer game writer combining the two passions of her father, writing and computer technology.
Sir Terry has been knighted at the age of sixty and as a true sci-fi and fantasy fan
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he had a sword made of meteorite metal reasoning that “if one is to be a knight one should do it properly.” (Penny 28)
Sir Terry Pratchett is seen by most people who do not know him personally as “an affable man with a beard and a hat.” (Gaiman) Not many people would suspect that he is often driven by anger and fury which, of course, does not make him a bit less likeable. Everybody needs a driving force to pull them forward and if it is his anger that brought us Discworld than be it. On one hand he rages against
“stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and short-sightedness” while on the other hand “there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity.” (Gaiman) His anger is what drives his work and most of what he does in life.
As previously mentioned, in 2007 Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with an early onset of Alzheimer‟s disease, posterior cortical atrophy or PCA, which affects his spatial awareness. Unfortunately, there is no cure for PCA and it is difficult to make guesses about its developments. Sir Terry thinks that “the sheer grind of writing will get [him] down long before there‟s still plenty of room for [him] to enjoy things in life. Oddly enough, the ability to plot and invent dialogue and characters seems to be totally untouched.” (Pratchett, Book World Live) He started suspecting that something was not right when he had noticed “the precision of [his] touch-typing getting progressively worse and [his] spelling starting to slip.” (Pratchett, Those of us) It was at the age of 59. Nowadays he dictates his stories to a voice-recognition program. 7
Since then he has redirected his anger at the disease and is actively participating in dementia awareness campaign giving numerous interviews, writing
(or rather dictating) articles on this subject, and participating in various documentaries. Dementia is a disease from which approximately one in three people over the age of 65 suffer. Still, the world remains generally silent about it.
As he wrote in a 2014 article for The Guardian: “there are hundreds of thousands of us out there living with dementia who […] every now and again really could do with a little help from a friend.” (Pratchett, Those of us) He became a symbol of hope for millions of people struggling with this condition.
As dementia patients mostly are unable to take care of themselves at the end of their lives they usually end up, and die, either in hospitals or in hospices.
Sir Terry, as well as many others, believe that there should be a choice. Since he had spent the last weeks before his father died of pancreatic cancer in hospital he does have experience with the suffering one goes through before they die and, obviously, he does not want to go that way. Thus, he started actively participating in a fight for legalization of assisted dying in UK. One should simply have a choice.
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3. The End Game and Campaigning for Assisted Death
When Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with PCA he became very angry and he has redirected his anger into fighting. He became “angry with his brain and his genetics and, more than these, furious at a country that would not permit him
(or others in a similarly intolerable situation) to choose the manner and the time of their passing.” (Gaiman) So he fights against the disease and talks publicly for the cause and against people who think that a person should not be allowed to die when they want to but when they must. As his good friend and a fellow fantasy author Neil Gaiman pointed out, “beneath any jollity there is a foundation of fury.”
Nowadays he speaks out loud about dementia and about the right to die in comfort of your home (or rather not in hospitals or hospices) and of your own choice. He uses his popularity to make visible what has been for a long time a vastly avoided subject, understandably, because who would want to talk about the right to die when they are healthy and feel good. He fights for a cause that matters. The issue of assisted dying is not much spoken about since it does not affect a massive part of population and people generally tend to forget that they eventually will have to die. It is a very sensitive subject and not much fun for a conversation even though the conversation is necessary.
Assisted suicide, or assisted death, as Terry Pratchett prefers to call it
(Shaking Hands with Death), is currently legal in Belgium (since 2002),
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Netherlands, Switzerland and several US states. (Cable) People suffering from terminal diseases living in countries where assisted death remains illegal are forced to live up their time in hospitals or hospices or choose the “do it yourself” way out and commit suicide. But most of the people suffering from such conditions die in hospices or hospitals. Not such a long time ago it used to be beds in their own homes surrounded by families. As he says “departing on schedule with the help of a friendly doctor was quite usual and there is every reason to believe the medical profession considered that part of its duty was to help the stricken patient on his way.” (Pratchett, When the time comes)
For those lucky enough to have the financial resources there is an opportunity to contact Dignitas, a non-profit organization in Zurich, Switzerland that helps people of sound mind to die when they choose. In a Bafta award- winning BBC documentary Choosing to die Terry Pratchett met two people who travelled to Switzerland to die and he solemnly witnessed, and showed in the documentary, the voluntary death of one of them. The documentary shows the whole picture with interviews of patients and the employees of Dignitas. In UK there is an organization called the Dignity in Dying that favours assisted death in special circumstances. Against it stands the Care Not Killing Alliance that states that help is always available. (Pratchett, When the time comes) In Choosing to die
Terry Pratchett has also revealed that one of his motivations is not to burden his wife even though she would gladly take care of him to the last moment. (Choosing to Die)
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For Sir Terry having a choice is the important part. For many people who are diagnosed with a terminal disease it becomes very stressful when they think about the end and the pain because, unless they choose to take their own life, the pain, mental or physical, is inevitable. Sir Terry expressed this fear when saying:
“If I knew I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.” (Pratchett,
When the time comes)
He also speaks out about the difference between living and mere existence for nowadays the borderline remains blurry. People whose body may be still artificially kept alive but their mind is gone are not alive, they merely exist. As he says “for someone with a serious, incurable and debilitating disease to elect for a medically assisted death by appointment seems to [him] to be a reasonable and sensible decision”. The medical advances made it possible to postpone death but not yet found a way to fill this time with life. No one likes to stay in “God‟s waiting room.” (Pratchett, When the time comes)
In the year 2010 Sir Terry delivered a prestigious Richard Dimbleby Lecture for BBC, or rather he wrote it, introduced it and had it read by his friend and actor
Tony Robinson. In the lecture he expressed his feelings and attitudes towards the question of his inevitable death stating “I enjoy my life and wish to continue it for as long as I am still myself, knowing who I am and recognizing my nearest and dearest.” He is admirably open about such a grim issue and in his interviews he often talks about having “an appointment with death,” or maybe Death, and having to “shake hands with Death” directly referring to the character he created 11
for the Discworld where everyone has a life-timer so Death knows exactly when to come collect the souls when the bodies run out of time. (Pratchett, When the time comes)
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4. The Discworld and other Worlds
By the end of the year 2014 Sir Terry Pratchett has written a magnificent number of 83 books of which 40 belong to the Discworld series, 21 are books concerning Discworld, 9 are Non Discworld novels and 13 are novels marked as being “for younger readers” as they have been categorized on Terry Pratchett‟s
Official Website. Some of these books are collaborations with other authors, such as his good friend Neil Gaiman, with whom they created a 1990 novel Good
Omens, or Stephen Briggs (The Discworld Companion). Sir Terry has also collaborated on creating 5 maps of Discworld locations, such as a map of Ankh-
Morpork or Lancre.2
There are still many people who believe that fantasy literature is written entirely for children, that fantasy equals fairy-tales. Despite the fact that literary critics have defined and debunked the stigma attached to fantasy literature, the genre itself is still thought of and “continues to be dismissed as escapist fluff – fluff of scantily clad sorceresses and wizards with long staffs.” (Thomas 60) There is nothing further from the truth for Terry Pratchett writes “for adults of all ages”
(Lenz and Hunt 91). He is angry that there are people who think that “serious is the opposite of funny” (Gaiman) for his books are very humorous while still commenting and criticizing functioning and functionality of current society. Terry
2 Easily categorized list of books by Terry Pratchett with pictures of title pages can be found on the following website: http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/index.php/books/# 13
Pratchett´s novels are about fairness of the universe, as Neil Gaiman points out, there is this “sense of fairness that underlies Terry‟s work and his writing.” For example when Death, the Discworld character, was impersonating Hogfather (a
Discworld version of Father Christmas) in Hogfather he would comment on unfairness of the holiday where some have riches and others have next to nothing, and having seen the little match girl freezing to death he pointed out how unfair that was and ordered to get her out of the cold and get her a warm drink since it was Hogswatchnight (Christmas). (218) At least in this novel the little match girl got her merry Christmas.
Since Sir Terry is driven by the feelings of fury, it was the fury that became
“the engine that powered Discworld” as Neil Gaiman continues. On the other hand
Pratchett says that in his books he only promotes the golden rule which goes “do as you would be done by” and tries to pass this knowledge onto his readers.
(Pratchett, Book World)
Although, most readers know him for his Discworld series he is quite capable of writing completely different sort of stories. In the year 2012 he cooperated with his friend Stephen Baxter on a sci-fi epic called The Long Earth that focuses on alternative universes and resource allocation set in near future.
(Penny 29) This particular novel shows his pessimistic, but very realistic, vision of future as he predicts that “we are going to end up fighting each other for resources and waste most of those resources fighting one another.” (Penny 29)
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Since in The Long Earth his predictions are made quite clear, in the
Discworld he “finds time for social commentary that often surpasses the serious social commentators of our day in its wisdom” (Thomas 63) and thus maybe affecting a part of the population that may not be particularly interested in reading daily news and contemplating problems of the word. On an example of death itself, or Death himself, one can see that such a grim issue may be passed on to the readers as one of the most loveable characters. It can be summarized that
Terry Pratchett “uses nerdy fantasy and slapstick comedy as tools to tell stories about racism and religious hatred, war and the nature of bigotry, love and sin and sex and death, always death, knotted into the ersatz adventures of talking dogs, zombie revolutionaries, crime-fighting werewolves, tooth fairies, crocodile gods and funny little men who sell suspicious sausages on street corners.” (Penny 27)
As Candace Horgan points out in her article focused on satire in the Discworld,
Terry Pratchett uses multiple layers of satire so “you can never pick up all the jokes he makes in one reading” or all the social criticism and references.
The Discworld novels, of which five are the main focus of this thesis, generally centre around one of four recurring casts of characters: the Witches of
Lancre, Rincewind the inept wizard, the Ankh-Morpork city guard or Death and
Helit. (Horgan) Generally speaking most of the characters the author has ever created were added to the permanent cast and are widely recurrent, always being themselves in all possible situations. These characters all develop throughout the stories and they are depicted in more and more detail, which means that “the
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more detailed and abundant the life he pours into them the harder he makes his own task of keeping them viable, which in the Discworld means keeping them unpredictable.” (Spufford) As has already been mentioned the Discworld Death novels are: Mort (1987), Reaper Man (1991), Soul Music (1994), Hogfather (1996) and finally Thief of Time (2001).
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5. The Discworld and Dying
Before jumping directly to Death himself it is natural to have a look at what happens when creatures in the Discworld die. People, and other creatures who die have their souls ushered into the next world by Death. Generally, when Death comes for them he cuts their spirits off from their bodies by a scythe but in special occasions when he comes for royalty he uses a white-handled sword, it is a tradition. (Mort 21) The spirits of the creatures are transparent and shaped as in life, so that when Death releases spirits of a couple of kittens killed in Ankh-
Morpork, they are kitten-shaped. Death likes kittens. (Mort 32) The spirits are attached to the bodies by a blue string that Death cuts. After a short while the spirits seem to be collapsing into themselves growing smaller until they turn into a tiny brilliant pinpoint. (Mort 64) Also the spirits of people seem to be in their best age so the old ones look young again. (Mort 97)
In Reaper Man it has been revealed that “it is widely suspected, but not generally known, that everything has an associated spirit form which, upon its demise, exists briefly in the draughty gap between the worlds of living and the dead.” (85) It obviously refers to the time when the body is dead but the spirit has not yet been cut off. Even though Reaper Man had been written a long time before Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with PCA, this “draughty gap” may also
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refer to the state when a person is kept alive and yet not being able to live, the state which frightens many terminally ill people and Terry Pratchett as well.
In the novels there is a very clear difference between killing and taking a life and Death “never killed. He‟d taken life but only when it was finished with.
There was a difference between theft and stealing by finding.” (Reaper Man 131)
However, in Reaper Man, when he was employed as a helping hand at a farm, he was supposed to kill a chicken for food, as is usual on farms. He rather took its life and it made him feel really unhappy for this time he was actually taking life that was not yet finished with and not just releasing it from the body that run out of time. Anyway, he did not do it in a killing manner but he simply took the spirit away. Death “is no cruel and doesn‟t see himself as bringing justice, just a release from the current life.” (Butler 29)
On the other hand, Death understands the logic of his position in the
Discworld since “it‟d be a bloody stupid world if people got killed without dying.”
(Mort 24) As he expressed in Reaper Man, Death understood that “his business was the separation of the wheatgerm of the soul from the chaff of the mortal body” (122) and he did not think about whether what he did was right or wrong, on the contrary he even states that “[he is] NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING
AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.” (195)
Another thing that needs to be explained is that the act of dying in the
Discworld is never depicted as an extremely sad event as is in many other pieces
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of literature or in culture generally. People do not even realize that they are dead until they see Death and look down on the remains of their bodies. At that time they do not feel sad because, as Death explains in Mort, feelings are a matter of glands and those are left behind. (62) In reality, as Pratchett very well knows, people are not afraid of being dead but of the actual dying which usually is a painful process. In the Discworld many times people simply die without a warning so there is no time for the actual fear.
A special group of people in the Discworld who know when their time runs out are witches and wizards. They know when they are going to die if it is the case of “running out of life” (Reaper Man 13) and not when they die a violent death. As well as cats they are also capable of seeing Death at all occasions, unlike other people whose brains simply refuse to accept what they see, and
Death is obliged to come “in person to usher [wizards and witches] into the
Beyond” (23) rather than sending one of his “minor functionaries”. (Mort 77)
As has already been mentioned, Death likes cats. Thus, when Maurice the amazing talking cat from The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents died,
Death himself came for him. In the Discworld cats really do have nine lives and
Maurice chose to plead with Death and was able to exchange one of his lives for the life of his rat friend, Dangerous Beans, whose soul was at that time being collected by Death of Rats. One may deduce that if you are a cat in the Discworld you can actually negotiate with Death, others who tried were always unsuccessful.
(Oziewicz 90-91) 19
Death has a very individual approach to everybody he comes to unburden of life. Individuality is the important part. When in Reaper Man he was working for
Miss Flitworth at a farm he was using his scythe to always cut one blade of grass at a time firmly stating that “ONE TIME, ONE BLADE.” (Reaper Man 91) In that particular book an obvious parallel emerges between blades of grass and human lives. Death understands that every life is individual and needs to be approached as such. The threat comes for humans in the form of a new Death, not aware of the importance of individuality, while for corn it is a mechanical harvester capable of harvesting a whole field in a day. (Butler 39)
Dying in the Discworld is depicted as a natural process expected by some and very surprising for the others. It also “may have positive consequences for those left behind” as is clear in Mort. (Butler 29) Afterlife, on the other hand, also has different options. Sometime life does not simply end by dying, it only changes or turns into a different life. This is the case of the undead and, in the Discworld, there are always some zombies, vampires or banshees around. (Reaper Man 38)
The undead “live” as best as they can in the world of living, and only occasionally attract living people‟s attention by painting slogans such as “Inside Every Living
Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out” on the walls in Ankh-Morpork.
(Reaper Man 285) Most people still chose to go on and see what awaits for them as a “normal reaction of a spirit, suddenly pitched from one world into the next, was to hang around hopefully. Why run, after all? It wasn‟t as if you knew where you were running to.” (Reaper Man 228) These spirits finally went where they
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believed they would go. As Mort summarized the practical functionality of
Discworld afterlife when doing Death‟s duty and saying “RUN ALONG WHEREVER
YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE GOING” to one of the spirits. (Mort 270)
However, some spirits are forced to remain in their bodies when there is no one to cut off the spirit cord. Such a situation occurred in Reaper Man where the author masterfully played with what would actually happen in the Discworld if there was no Death for a while. In Reaper Man, as previously mentioned, Death was given time and for a certain period stopped taking lives which resulted in chaos. Simply people were dying but their spirits were forced to remain in the world and they could not go on into the afterlife which resulted in a dangerous build-up of life force. (103) If not prevented by a bunch of wizards led by a dead wizard Windle Poons, a couple of new cities may have “hatched” and literally grew up in the near proximity of the places with high concentration of life force, such as
Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city in the Discworld. As Peter Gilbert comments in his article “From cradle to beyond the grave” it is very possible that “sometimes, perhaps we need fantasy and irony to highlight our human pretentions.” (142)
Terry Pratchett‟s books despite being written often in a very comical mode are bringing us closer to the issues of life which we may consider not so great, such as inevitable death of each and every one of us.
Afterlife in the Discworld is based on a choice and belief. For some characters it means reincarnation, for others maybe heaven. The atheists are probably in trouble. In the stories of Discworld “there is indeed a very strong 21
sense that people can make their own fate by their own decisions and actions, despite the fact that each person‟s life seems to be written down in a book. The impact of belief is in fact one which powers much of the workings of the Discworld series.” (Butler 29)
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6. The Death of Discworld
Death is a recurrent character occurring in most of Terry Pratchett´s novels. He first appeared in The Colour of Magic, the first Discworld novel published in 1983, where he appears every few pages since the wizard Rincewind is often in danger and Death is expected to show up in person to take his. In the following novels he appears when the wizards of Unseen University use the Rite of
Ashk-Ente (Reaper Man 98) to summon him and ask a few difficult questions, or when he comes to collect the life of one of the unfortunate characters. In Lords and Ladies he appears only to visit one of the characters to have his horse, Binky, shod and in The Last Continent he only appears to take a “puzzled look at
Rincewind´s hourglass of life.” (Butler 59)
In the hierarchy of death is the Death of Discworld only an aspect of “the one Death: Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the beginning and end of time.” (Reaper Man 264-265) In the novels all the deaths carry the same quality to their dialogues or monologues – they speak in capital letters. Since for the Death of Discworld this means only capitalizing his speech compared to other character‟s lines, for the Death of Universe, who is supposed to encompass all, it also involves massive increase in the size of capital letters. However, Azrael is far less talkative and speaks only one word throughout the whole series which goes
“YES” (Reaper Man 265) and covers half a page of the book. A similarly interesting
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is the case of Death of Rats, who speaks in normal sized capital letters but his speech only expresses the sound he would make as a rat constantly expressing various thoughts by simply saying “SQEAK.” The other characters understand him anyway and are capable of having quite a sophisticated conversation with him leaving the reader guessing or deducing what might have actually been told. This capitalization of Death‟s speech makes it possible for the author to put him into a story without introducing him, or describing him, which often happens.
His name is Death and he is named for what he embodies. When he was
Bill Door working on a farm in Reaper Man he was named for who he was. (89)
Death, the personality, was created through belief. He emerged along with life.
“He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old.” (Reaper Man 104) However, having a personality may have some unexpected consequences such as being sacked because, as the auditors say at the very beginning of Reaper Man, “there is a personality. Personalities come to an end. Only forces endure.” (6) The auditors of reality, who hate life because it is disorganized, found his taking interest in human lives distasteful and decided to replace him and, as a result, they gave him time.
When Death realizes that he has a life-timer he thinks about it as about an adventure (Reaper Man 17) and he decides that “[he is] going to spend it.” (18)
For example, he is very curious about dreaming and expects it with the intention of subjecting it to analysis. (90) Death has always been fascinated by humans and 24
now that he is mortal he starts to really experience sunlight or wind and everything feels different once he sees the end of himself. And since he is a person not born into time he constantly feels time passing and feels how it is carrying him with it. (120) He cannot understand that humans welcome time in their homes in the form of clocks, “as though it were a friend”. He is painfully aware of time passing and does not understand how people can endure it. (126)
Once he becomes mortal like the humans he ponders life asking himself “was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?”
(127) And when his time comes, or rather runs out, and the New Death is about to come for the Death, he even tries to escape, despite knowing that it is only putting off the inevitable asking himself if it is not actually “what living was all about.” (228) When he was Bill Door life certainly had a different feeling to when he was Death. “Seconds had meant a lot to Bill Door, because he‟d had a limited supply. They meant nothing at all to Death, who‟d never had any.” (263)
Even Death himself found it hard to live in the human world and even
Death fought for his life. It helped him to understand humans and their lives a bit more for in human world he was a reaper man, one of many, while in his timeless world he was the Reaper Man. Terry Pratchett described his position in the following words: “Corn stretched over the hillside; it was made up of individual stalks, and to the eye of one stalk another stalk might be quite an impressive stalk, with a dozen amusing and distinctive mannerisms that set it apart from all other stalks. But to the reaper man, all stalks start off as… just stalks.” (Reaper
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Man 167) It simply means that life feels different once you are a part of it than when you look at it and analyse it from a distance. For a time Death was human and he acted and reacted as one so how could anyone be afraid of such a lovable character?
Terry Pratchett is not. Or he has says so in an interview for Washington DC, where he speaks openly about not being afraid of dying. Even after being diagnosed with PCA his views have not changed. After his diagnosis became public he was asked if his “philosophy about the characterization of death altered” and whether he was afraid to which he replied that no, and that he “suspected that few people [are afraid of death], what they all fear is what might happen in the years or months before death.” (Pratchett, Book World Live) In his novels Sir
Terry promotes the Golden Rule, which should be understood as “do as you would be done by.” He also understands that “evil starts when you treat other people as things. There are perhaps worse crimes, but they begin when you treat other people as things.” (Pratchett, Book World Live) With this in mind the readers must understand that Death is simply not evil since Death cares about people enough to adopt a little girl, Ysabell, whose mother dies, and who lives with him in his black land where time stand s still. (Soul Music 7)
It may have been when he adopted Ysabell and brought her into his home that Death started to show deeper interest in humans with whom he was working for so long. “It was probably curiosity. Even the most efficient rat-catcher will sooner or later take an interest in rats.” Death resides in a place “between the 26
dimensions,” (Soul Music 7) sometimes it is called “Death‟s Domain” where he has built everything in black. In his house is a very important room where “the future pours into the past via the pinch of the now.” (Reaper Man 7) It is the life-timer room, where every living creature has their own time kept. In his land there is no time. There is only present and an older version of present or “a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.” (15)
Over the time throughout the novels Death is becoming more and more restless. In his restlessness he adopts a child, takes on an apprentice, Mortimer, is fired and fights for his life as Bill Door, and becomes a proud grandfather of Susan
Sto Helit. One may say that he has become partly human, sharing in the troubles of people. “Death was fascinated by humans and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked up . . . humanity. Not the real thing but something that might pass for it until you examine it closely.” (Hogfather, 121-122) His humanity was showing in all aspects of his life, starting by the house and going all the way through to the time of Soul Music when he left his duty to grieve for his dead daughter Ysabell and her husband and his apprentice, Mortimer. At that time Death became depressed and decided to join the Klatchian Foreign Legion to try and forget about it. Forgetting is for him quite impossible. (Butler 47)
For Death being in contact with living people presents difficulties because for all rational human beings Death is almost always invisible. People do not really 27
see him when they are directly confronted by him because “he occupied a blind spot in their senses, which they filled in somewhere inside their heads with something they preferred to encounter,” (Reaper Man 95) and when he walked in the streets people were avoiding him without really seeing him. (Mort 30) On the other hand he was perfectly visible to children “because they hadn‟t yet developed that convenient and selective blindness that comes with the intimation of personal mortality” (Hogfather 427) and beggars, because “being of an invisible nature themselves, they were naturally good at seeing things unseen by other men.”
(Soul Music 339)
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7. Representation of Death
Death in Terry Pratchett‟s Discworld is an “anthropomorphic personification.” As has been revealed in Hogfather in an answer to a question of what is an anthropomorphic personification put to a sort of a magical computer the answer goes “+++ Humans Have Always Ascribed Random, Seasonal, Natural
Or Inexplicable Actions To Human-Shaped Entities. Such Examples Are Jack Frost,
The Hogfather, The Tooth Fairy And Death +++.” (228) Anthropomorphic personifications are “HUMAN AND YET NOT A PART OF HUMANITY‟S UNIVERSE” as Death explained to Susan in Thief of Time (110). Other characters described as
“anthropomorphic personifications” are the Tooth Fairy, Hogfather (a Discworld equivalent of Father Christmas), the Bogeyman, Famine, War, Pestilence (Thief of
Time 235), Kaos, Panic, Terror, Time, Death of Rats, Soul Cake Duck or Sandman.
Sir Terry Pratchett based his Death on a personification of Death in a 1957
Swedish film Seventh Seal written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. In the film, which took place during Black Plaque period, Death was a “kindly Death cleaning up the mess that this life leaves and opening the gates to the next ones. Indeed in some religions he is an angel.” (Shaking Hands with Death) Death in Mort was inspired also by another film, Death takes a holiday (1934). (Butler 28)
In the Discworld Death is also kind and he is also a personality since “on
Discworld all metaphors are potentially real, all figures of speech have a way of
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becoming more than words” (Pratchett, Imaginary 160) it is only logical that when people say that death came for someone it must mean that Death needs to be capable of coming for someone and so it must become a someone. Human approach to death as a state is in this period troublesome because “human beings have found it difficult to establish a clear comprehensive, and central conceptualization of death for themselves, and without such a formulation, adjustment to the reality of death becomes far more difficult than it need be.”
(Gilbert, Human Adjustment 772) People do not really know, or refuse to know, what happens with a human consciousness when the body diminishes. Knowing that we die often comes as a shock to children at a certain age who often find it incomprehensible and confusing considering all the various views in different religions. Terry Pratchett brings people in direct contact with dying and Death. As has been established in an article named “Sex, Death and Nature” written by
Laurie Penny “if there is one thing that distinguishes Pratchett‟s contributions to the young adult section of bookshops it is his willingness to bring young people face to face with some of the more gruesome facts of human existence, with the silly seriousness you would expect of a dying comedy writer who‟d had a personal coat of arms made up with a Latin motto that features in his own books. The motto is “Noli timere messorem” – don‟t fear the reaper.” (30)
Through Pratchett‟s work children as well as adults find Death more understandable and approachable. If Death is one of your favourite characters and he is very nice and funny you definitely stop looking at death as if it was an
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enemy. It also helps to know that in the Discworld one gets to the afterlife they believe in. The feeling one has from reading about Death is the feeling most children until certain age have about Father Christmas. It is that “the deep suspicion that it can´t possibly be real is almost overwhelmed by a fervent hope that it might be true.” (Pratchett, Imaginary 162) It should be pointed out that this principle functions as a form of a religion because it helps a number of people to get over the fear of dying. Some people need to believe that there is a big bearded man in the sky playing chess with human lives, for others a loveable character of Death who tells them it is ok and they can go on where they believe they will go. Terry Pratchett as a writer says that “he has always been comfortable with confronting mortality: Death” (Pratchett, Facing Death 5) and persists in his opinions even after getting so much closer to the actual dying.
Terry Pratchett has created Death as a personality that embodies the process of dying, but Death himself talks about what he does as a duty or a job.
In Reaper Man he argues with the auditors by saying “I HAVE ALWAYS DONE MY
DUTY AS I SAW FIT.” (9) He states that “THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO
DIE” (137) and he only comes to do his duty. Concerning dying, Pratchett practices a form of predestination. Everybody has their own life-timer that marks how much time they have. Everything is foretold and “TO TINKER WITH THE
FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD.” (Reaper Man
137, Mort 65) That is an important rule that Death always obeys. On the other hand when he is released from duty and given time he chooses to give some of
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his time to a little girl, and thus tinkering with the stability of reality, not being particularly concerned with what may come of it since he does not have much time. (Reaper Man 145) Death who lives out of time understands how important it is to go on, because his job is a necessary one so when Susan, as well as her father before her, talks about the unfairness of the world he replies: “YOU
PRATTLE ON ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD? COULD YOU FIND THE COURAGE
TO ACCEPT IT? TO KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE AND DO IT, WHATEVER THE
COST? IS THERE ONE HUMAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHO KNOWS WHAT
DUTY MEANS?” (Soul Music 155) Still, every time that Death becomes unavailable for one reason or another the person taking over his role, Mort or Susan, always endanger the course of reality by not understanding how dangerous it actually is to change the story that has already been, metaphorically, written.
Also another interesting point to make is that in most of the Death novels
Death simply does not do his job as he should. In Mort he takes on an apprentice,
Mortimer, passes his job onto Mort and goes to mingle into humanity ending up working as a cook in Ankh-Morpork. In Reaper Man he “is made redundant because of the way he has been acting human” (Butler 38) and he is given time so he ends up at a farm working as, surprisingly, a reaper man. In Soul Music he is depressed because of his adopted daughter‟s death and leaves to try forget the pain. In Hogfather he takes on Hogfather‟s job riding on a sleigh pulled by hogs and delivering presents to all the good children, while wearing a fake belly and a white beard, trying to restore belief in Hogfather and thus his presence. Finally, in
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Thief of Time Death knows that the world is coming to an and because he, who remembers the past and the future, simply remembers that after Wednesday one o‟clock there will be nothing more than Wednesday one o‟clock (105) so he is visiting his old friends Famine, Pestilence and War to persuade them to ride out as the riders of Apocalypse once more.
Most of the time Death oscillates between doing his duty as need be and trying to understand humans. In Mort he wishes to learn about being human.
Being Death has become a job for him, going out on his rounds like a milkman
(Butler 28) so he chooses to take an apprentice. Death “FELT IT WAS TIME FOR A
CHANGE” (Mort 215) and so decided to pass the job on to Mort and took a few days off. He tried “fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life‟s greatest pleasures, and wasn‟t sure that he saw the point.” (Mort, 207) He tried hard to learn what does it mean to have fun and all the time he was inquiring about it. (185) He even ended up looking for a new job which, as he explained to an employee of an Ankh-Morpork personal agency, he hoped to include “flowers or kittens.” (227) Being severely unskilled “he finds it hard to find work as an experienced scythe-wielder” (Butler 28) so he ends up working as a cook and feeding the neighbourhood cats. (Mort 227) As has already been mentioned,
Death is depicted as one of the most humane characters. He tries to understand what it means to be human so hard that he focuses on life far more than humans themselves. This idea is very relevant for current society where people avoid thinking and speaking about death and somehow subconsciously behave as if they
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were to live forever and thus forget to live at all. Only people who think about death as something natural are capable of living a fulfilling life and avoid loads of unnecessary activities or things that really are unimportant for life but we think of them as such.
Death himself, since he is the only one, feels very alone standing outside humanity and he opens up to a barman in the Broken Drum, Ankh-Morpork talking about how they all hate him and that he does not have a single friend while actively trying to get drunk, which is once more impossible for Death. (Mort 199)
He talks about and ponders the purpose of living, what future shall bring and asks the questions which would be far more understandable in characters actually human. (200) Susan says about him that he always gets these human things wrong because “he saw life from outside and never quite understood.” (Hogfather
285) In practice it means that his house is full of unusable versions of things humans use, like a bed hard as marble with stone sheets or a toilet without functional plumbing. (Soul Music 79)
Terry Pratchett has chosen for Death the appearance reflecting the one in
Bergman‟s Seventh Seal. In the Discworld “the shape of Death is the shape people had created for him over the centuries. Why bony? Because bones were associated with death. He‟d got a scythe because agricultural people could spot a decent metaphor. And he lived in a sombre land because the human imagination would be rather stretched to let him live somewhere nice with flowers.”
(Hogfather 276) People with their thoughts may have created the original shape of 34
Death but they will probably never understand how much they shape him further.
Death understands that when you “hung around with humans long enough and you stopped being what they imagined you to be and wanted to become something of your own.” (Hogfather 392) Death also says that “if an intelligent creature takes a human shape, it starts to think human” which means that clearly
“form defines function,” (Thief of Time 304) which may also be gathered from behaviour of other human-shaped anthropomorphic personifications who cannot possibly be analysed in the length of this thesis.
This aforementioned changing of Death has resulted in his dismissal by the auditors and gave the author a chance to have a look at a world without death. So in Reaper Man Terry Pratchett tested out “what might happen if Death goes on holiday, with both humorous and thought-provoking results.” (Gilbert 772) The consequences were indeed dire. Since every conscious reader understands that
“the Discworld does stand in a complex relationship to our own reality, presenting a distorted mirror where everything is the same but different” (Anderson 112)
Terry Pratchett has become an author who makes his readers think about the reality while looking at it through fantasy stories.
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8. The other Deaths
The readers can distinguish two sets of characters being categorized as
“the other Deaths.” On one hand these are the private deaths of every species that sprang up in Reaper Man when there was a surplus of belief after Death had been given life. They were small and not very powerful but they were “no longer united but specific”. Among these were, for example, the Death of Mayflies, the
Death of Trees, the Death of Tortoises, the Death of Fleas and the Death of Rats.
(Reaper Man 104) On the other hand there were human characters that, for a certain period of time, substituted Death when he was unavailable. These were
Death‟s apprentice Mortimer who later became his son-in-law, and Death‟s granddaughter Susan Sto Helit, the only daughter of Mort and Ysabell, Death‟s adopted daughter. Generally, in Death novels Death is far more likely to not do his job than do it. (Butler 48)
When at the end of Reaper Man the original Death was re-established in
“dealing in death because, paradoxically, it is the only life for him” (Butler 29) and the loose amount of belief was returned into himself he summoned all the other deaths that had emerged in the period of his absence from duty and contained most of them. There are two deaths who were not absorbed and these are the
Death of rats, who was holding on to a beam (Reaper Man 248), and the Death of
Fleas, who was holding on to the Death of Rats. (287) When these two lesser deaths encountered Death he tried to argue with them explaining that he is
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implacable and alone and that they need to become a part of him, but then he remembered that it is good not to be alone and left them remain individual. (287)
The Death of Rats came to existence in the ruins under the barn of Miss
Flitworth, the owner of the farm on which Death got a job in Reaper Man. First it had difficulties deciding what shape to adopt. Finally it adopted “not so much a shape as a memory of a shape” (131) and became a rat. “It was about six inches high. It wore a black robe. It held a small scythe in one skeletal paw. A bone- white nose with brittle grey whiskers protruded from the shadowy hood.” (135)
Death of rats is depicted as an impossibly cute character, usually playing with food or expressing emotions in other ways than by facial expressions, such as gnawing on his little scythe when being nervous. He is the one who always alerts Susan that her grandfather is missing or when he needs to speak with her. Death of Rats has a companion, a raven named Quoth, an obvious reference to Edgar Allan
Poe‟s “The Raven”. He is the only other death character who takes active part in the story. “Death was never quite sure why he allowed the Death of Rats to have an independent existence.” (Thief of Time 14) It was probably the need for companionship with someone who shares similar lifestyle.
Mortimer, in short Mort, after whom the first Death novel is named, becomes a Death for a short time when Death decided to take some time off and find a new job. He was offered the chance to become Death permanently, since being dead wasn‟t obligatory, but have chosen to “rather die and see what happens than spend eternity [in Death‟s country].” (Mort 243) Mort refused, as 37
Death called it, the skills, the career structure, prospects and a job for life (Mort
275) in order to experience the real life and death. He eventually married Death‟s adopted daughter, Ysabell, became Duke of Sto Helit and had a daughter, Susan, who was brought up to become an extremely logical and seemingly ordinary person. (Thief of Time 216-217)
While Mort remained a pure human while doing Death‟s job for a while, with Susan it was different. Susan got sacked into the job when Death left to grieve over the deaths of Ysabell and Mortimer, Susan‟s parents, in Soul Music. At that time it even looked as if she actually inherited the “family business.” (Soul
Music, p. 151) Susan is depicted as a very strong and developed female character, not so unusual in Terry Pratchett‟s stories since his female characters are usually depicted as “tough, aggressive, and highly efficient.” (Lenz & Hunt 98) Susan was all these things and she also inherited some of Death‟s abilities because, as the author reveals, “there was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals. She could walk through walls when she really had to. She could use the tone of voice which was more like actions than words that somehow reached inside people and operated all the right switches.” (Hogfather 105) She also inherited a very useful ability, which she used quite a lot in her daily life and it was the ability to stop time and for that matter to live outside of time. (115-116) She explains it by saying that “some genetics are passed on via the soul” (Thief of Time 94) and concluding that for her “Death was hereditary.” (Hogfather 261)
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All these characters have to take on some aspects of Death since life without death would be impossible. As have already been pointed out, in Reaper
Man Terry Pratchett played with the possibility that there was no Death even for a while and the results were very unpleasant. Death is omnipresent. That is why he actually appears in all Discworld novels in one form or another.
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9. Conclusion
Since one cannot say about another person that their attitudes haven‟t changed it is impossible to say so even in this case. Terry Pratchett is a man of strong opinions and his overall attitude towards death and dying haven‟t changed much since the year 2007 and his Alzheimer‟s diagnoses. It is impossible to say for mere readers whether there was not at least a slight change of mind concerning death, but it is clear that when comparing what the author says in his novels and what he says in his public speeches or interviews there are no discrepancies. Terry
Pratchett personifies Death into a loveable and beloved character and thus minimizes fear of dying in his readers and definitely in himself. In his books he helps his reads, and himself, to come to terms with difficult situations and issues.
In a New Statement article called “Facing Death and Binky” has been summarized that Terry Pratchett‟s “gift has always been in treating the big subjects with the lightest touch and in smuggling huge banks of wisdom past unsuspecting, giggling readers.” (5) Terry Pratchett‟s character Death really reflects his approach to mortality since, as has already been mentioned, there is no change in the depiction of Death in his novels and there is no avoidance of the subject from the side of the author. On contrary, Terry Pratchett speaks very openly about death and dying in the world and the ability and possibility to die when one decides to.
Also, he says that he is not afraid in his interviews and lectures and who, being afraid of death, would decide to make a documentary about voluntary death and even witness the deaths of his fellow sufferers? He did both these things and
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many more that prove that Sir Terry, having a rational approach towards dying, is not afraid to die. Having created Death as one of the most beloved characters for many people certainly helps to diminish possible and understandable fear.
Also his choice to personify Death of Discworld has helped to make Death and the subject of death more understandable and approachable. Even though the
Discworld is a world that runs on magic rather than science there are certain characteristics that make more sense to readers than the actual reality they live in. One of these certainly is death, which is perfectly organized. Everybody has a life-timer and lives of all people are writing themselves into books in Death‟s library. The Death that is the focus of this thesis is the Death of Discworld. There are some smaller Deaths, like Death of Rats, and there is a bigger Death, called
Death of Universe or Azrael. Terry Pratchett has in his novels given order to the subject for most people very disorganized and uncertain. In his interviews he even suggests to people that “we should aim for a good and rich life well lived. And at the end of it, in the comfort of our own home, in the company of those who love us, have a death worth dying for.” (Pratchett, When the time comes) Terry
Pratchett‟s goals in creating Death were probably much deeper than just creating an unusual character. Through Death he often expresses his opinions such as in
Soul Music where he has Death say that “MOST PEOPLE ARE RATHER STUPID
AND WASTE THEIR LIVES.” (154) Even though rather oversimplified it very well characterizes current society.
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It is appropriate to finish with a quote from Terry Pratchett‟s very good friend and fellow author, Neil Gaiman, saying: “As Terry walks into the darkness much too soon, I find myself raging too: at the injustice that deprives us of – what? Another 20 or 30 books? Another shelf-full of ideas and glorious phrases and old friends and new, of stories in which people do what they really do best, which is use their hands to get themselves out of the trouble they got into by not thinking?” This quote expresses the thoughts and fears of many devoted fans who often, after having read the Death novels, carry with them much less fear and much more understanding of how life really works having learnt it supposedly from a fantasy and comedy writer.
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Works Cited
a) Primary Sources
Pratchett, Terry. Hogfather. Reprt. London: Corgi, 1997. Print.
Pratchett, Terry. Mort. Reprinted. London: Corgi, 1987. Print.
Pratchett, Terry. Reaper man. Reprinted. London: Corgi, 1996. Print.
Pratchett, Terry. Soul music. Reprinted. London: Corgi, 1995. Print.
Pratchett, Terry. Thief of time. London: Corgi, 2006. Print.
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b) Secondary Sources
Anderson, Gail-Nina. "The Folklore Of Discworld - Book Review." Folklore 122.1
(2011): 111-113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
Butler, Andrew M. The pocket essential Terry Pratchett. Harpenden: Pocket
Essentials, 2001. Print.
Cable, Amanda. "If Dad wants to end his life, it's his choice. I'll support him.". Mail
Online: Femail. 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2014.
daughter-admits-Dad-wants-end-life-choice-Ill-support-him.html > Candace Horgan Special to The,Denver Post. "Satire Continues in Discworld Novel." Denver Post: 0. May 27 2001. ProQuest.Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Spufford, Francis. "Terry Pratchett's Abundant Life." Evening Standard 20 Oct. 2011: 41. Regional Business News. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Neil Gaiman: “„Terry Pratchett isn‟t jolly. He‟s angry‟.". The Guardian: Culture. 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. not-jolly-neil-gaiman> Gilbert, Peter. "From the Cradle - to Beyond the Grave?" Quality in Ageing and 44 Older Adults 12.3 (2011): 141-51. ProQuest.Web. 4 Nov. 2013. ---. "Human Adjustment And The Problem Of Death." Death Studies 33.8 (2009): 771-774. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Lenz, Millicent and Hunt, Peter. Alternative worlds in fantasy fiction. Reprinted. London: Continuum, 2001. Print. Oziewicz, Marek. "“We Cooperate, or We Die”: Sustainable Coexistence in Terry Pratchett‟s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents." Children's Literature in Education vol. 40.issue 2 (2009): 85-94. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Penny, Laurie. "Sex, Death And Nature." New Statesman 141.5132 (2012): 26-31. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. "Terry Pratchett biography.". Fantasy Book Review. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. “Terry Pratchett: Home of Discworld and bestselling fantasy novels”. London: Transworld Publishers. Web. 28 May. 2013. < http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/> Pratchett, Terry. "Book World Live: 'Discworld' Author Terry Pratchett." Washington Post, The n.d.: Regional Business News. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. 45 ---. "Facing Death (And Binky)." New Statesman 141.5132 (2012): 5. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. ---. "Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories." Folklore 111 (2000/10/01): 159-168. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. ---. “Those of us with dementia need a little help from our friends”. The Guardian: Society. 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. with-dementia-help-from-friends> ---. "When the time comes I'll sit on my lawn, brandy in hand and Thomas Tallis on my iPod. And then I'll shake hands with Death." Daily Mail 02 Feb. 2010: 12. Regional Business News. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Thomas, Melissa. "Teaching Fantasy: Overcoming the Stigma of Fluff." The English Journal vol. 92.issue 5 (2003): 60-. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. c) Video Sources Tarabg. “Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die (2011) - Full Documentary” YouTube. Web. 2 Nov. 2013. TRINITYCOLLEGEDUBLIN. “Sir Terry Pratchett - The Science of Discworld” YouTube. Web. 2 Nov. 2013. Tr3vel0cita. “Terry Pratchett: Shaking Hands with Death.” YouTube. Web. 15 Dec.2014. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90b1MBwnEHM > 47 Résumé in English This bachelor thesis focuses on the subject of death in five novels written by Terry Pratchett. The main subject of the thesis is the character Death, the principals of dying in the Discworld and the author‟s attitudes towards this subject either in his novels or his personal life. It aims to understand who Death is and why he was personified in the novels with regard to Terry Pratchett‟s view of the subject considering that the author suffers from Alzheimer‟s disease since 2007. It also looks for possible connections between Terry Pratchett‟s life and his depiction of Death in the Discworld. This work deals with the subject of assisted death about which Terry Pratchett speaks a lot publicly. The bachelor thesis is divided into eight chapters. There are ten chapters focusing primarily on Terry Pratchett and his life, work and approach towards death while the following four chapters focus on the principles of dying and afterlife, Death of Discworld, the representation of death in the novels and other Death characters. The conclusion focuses on summarizing and answering the questions set in the introduction to the thesis. 48 Résumé in Czech Tato bakalářská práce, Koncept Smrti na Pratchettově Zeměploše, se zabývá aspektem smrti v pěti knihách Terryho Pratchetta, jejichž děj se odehrává na Zeměploše. Práce se zaměřuje na postavu Smrtě, který je personifikace procesu umírání. Práce je rozdělena na deset kapitol včetně úvodu, závěru a bibliografie. První tři kapitoly se zabývají autorem – jeho životem, dílem a participací ve veřejném boji za právo rozhodout se zemřít s lékařskou pomocí ve Velké Británii. Čtyři následující kapitoly jsou zaměřeny na analýzu a zabývají se Smrtěm samotným jako osobností, otázkami smrti na Zeměploše, posmrtným životem, autorovou motivací k vytvoření takového charakteru a také jinými postavami, které nahrazovaly Smrtě když nebyl k dispozici, nebo jsou představitelé nižších smrtí – potkaní a bleší. Cílem práce je podívat se na proces a osobu Smrtě na Zeměploše jelikož její autor má od roku 2007 diagnostikovánu Alzheimrovu chorobu a v současnosti aktivně bojuje za právo a možnost svobodně zemřít ve vlastní zemi. 49