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 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. 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 3 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 4 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 6 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. 8 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.