Book 11: Reaper Man

Reaper Man as a book is concerned with the theme of life and life-force. The central character is Death, who at the beginning of the book is told that he has lost his job as guardian of the doorway into the next world and must return to the Discworld and live a mortal life. Death's disappearance has major consequences all over the Disc as life-force builds up with nowhere to go.

In Ankh-Morpork, the implications of an embodied self are examined through the eyes of Windle Poons, an aged and now undead wizard. In contrast to Death, who as an anthropomorphic personification does not have any significant sense of embodied self but must become embodied in his life in the mortal world, Windle must learn how to use the body that his independent self has taken for granted for all his life. Windle's attempts to renegotiate his position in Ankh-Morpork society emphasise how much we as readers take for granted our embodiment, and that despite our conscious beliefs that we ourselves are truly independent of our bodies, we are still tethered to them by strong biological forces.

As a contrast, Death's attempts to try to make his way in the mortal Disc counterpoint Windle's experiences. Death has taken for granted his disembodiment and must now come to terms with it. His trials and tribulations also serve to emphasise the fundamental interconnectedness of the biological and social being; as a previously disembodied personification he has had no need for a personal name, but as a newly embodied person his person must have a name; society in the form of Miss Flitworth insists upon it.

As a new Death is not yet arising from the belief of humans, the excess life-force begins to spill over from the undead into totally new organisms. Taking further the image of ecology as a metaphor for social life, within the city of Ankh-Morpork a parasite is begining to grow. In an extended metaphor, the city of Ankh-Morpork is presented as a large herbivorous animal, which a quick moving predator could bring down and feast upon. The extended metaphor here can also be seen as a paean to the usefulness and descriptive power of metaphors themselves in our attempt to understand the complex social rituals of our world.

The three strands of the book come to a climax as the newly embodied Death discovers that he is due to die imminently and refuses to accept the existential reality of death but resolves to fight for his life. Illustrating the biological emphasis of the book, he cannot fight the new Death with normal weapons, but must ask for a sycthe to be "killed" so that he can use it against the new Death. The failure of the blacksmith to fulfil his contract, and his musings on the appropriateness of the biological metaphor, form an appropriate background to Miss Flitworth's donation of some of her own lifetime to Death, and his resulting final defeat of the new death using a real harvest scythe.

Livia Mitson

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