Literary Terms

Literary Terms
Absurdist tradition refers to twentieth-century works that depict the absurdity of the modern human condition, often with implicit reference to humanity's loss or lack of religious, philosophical, or cutural roots. The term
may be applied to any work of literature that stress an existential outlook, that one depicting the lonely, confused, and often anguished individual in an utterly bewildering universe. Conventions such as plot and dialogue are routinely flouted--as in the idea that a work of literature should be unified and coherent (in a linear progression).
Allusion: A figure of speech making casual reference to a famous historic or literary figure or event or work of literature. There is an allusion to Lewis's Narnia series and the fantasy world in Paterson's Bridge to Teribithia.
Alterity: the condition of being radically different or unlike some other being, state or thing
Anaphora: A repetition device wherein the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. "When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, then they moved" (7). E. B. White uses this rhetorical device in his chapter entitled "Escape" in which he enables the reader to develop a point of view of an inhabitant of the barn as he describes its smells.
Aporia: a gap in logic or consciousness or a point at which a text is most explicitly indeterminate (see indeterminacy) or self-contradictory, as in deconstruction. It is never completely solved or closed by the author or in the mind of the reader.
Archetype: A symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole. Carl Jung used the term "archetype" to refer to the generalized patterns of images that form the world of human representations in recurrent motifs, passing through the history of all culture. Since archetypes are rooted in the collective unconscious, they may be conceived through the psychic activity of any individual, be it in the form of dreams, art works, the ancient monuments of religious activity, or the contemporary images of commercial advertising. Such archetypes as the "innocent babe," the "unheeded prophet," the "philosopher's stone," and many others which also have their source in the primitive darkness of the unconscious, are repeated in numerous works of cultural creation.
Black comedy: Black comedy or black humour, not to be confused with comedy about blacks, etc. The use of the morbid the absurd for darkly comic purposes. This is a substantial component of the theatre of the absurd and the anti-novel. The notion of humor with a sadistic element might give further implications to this term.
Boydell was an illustrator "Boydell's picture gallery" of Shakespearean drama. His pictures were famous and I was fortunate to be able to get a copy of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare that had illustrations by Boyell in it. These illustrations were from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Caldecott award: An annual award presented by the American Library Association's Children's Services Division to the illustrator of the most distinguished picture book published in the US the preceding year. Unless also the illustrator, the author is not recognized; the award is for illustrations, not text. The award is named after the British illustrator Randolph Caldecott, whose illustrations added narrative and detail to an previously ignored art form.
Chronotope: Mikhail Bakhtin describes this term as "the intrinisic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature"(Discourse in the Novel 84). This is from the Greek "chronos"--time and "topos"--place, meaning literary a new "reality of timespace." In Bakhtin's theory, this term acquires a special meaning, namely, the indivisible unity of time and space. In fairy tales, time and space are beyond our experience while in fantasy the time/space relationship in that world create a contrast to reality. A typical example can be seen in Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, specifically in the chronotope of Narnia.
Community: A group of people who share common experiences, goals and myths and who provide a context for an individual's identity. Jonas in The Giver works out his identity in opposition to his community. cf phalanx
Connotation: The atmosphere of a word-something about the word that goes beyond what the dictionary delivers. The connotations of a word may include one's personal experiences with that word and other associations which cluster about the word.
Contract and Tutelage: According to Jacques Donzelot in The Policing of Families, the family develops in two registers: contract and tutelage. Contract indicates the autonomy the family enjoys when it observes the accepted norms of society. Tutelage, on the other hand, designates an external apparatus that infiltrates and intervenes in the family when the family breaks the contract. Tutelage consists of number of institutions, such as prisons, social work, discipline. Both contract and tutelage are ways for the society to exert control over the family: contract is the positive dimension of this control, tutelage the negative. (See Donzelot, The
Policing of Families 82-95 and D. A. Miller, The Novel and the Police 102-03).
Denmotation
Diachronic/Synchronic time
Dystopia: Polar opposite of utopia. A society in which social and/or technological trends have contributed to a corrupted or degraded state.
Empathy: The imaginative projection into another's feelings, a state of total identification with another's situation, condition, and thoughts. The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without explicitly articulating these feelings. Fern empathizes with Wilbur; Charlotte empathizes with Wilbur.
Existential idea of Freedom: This concept of freedom is related to Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of existentialsim, in which the basic tenent is that "man is what he does." The burden of decision to act, the loneliness, and angst, the alienation, and often even the terror that an individual confronts in this world view, explains a character's conflicting emotions regarding what it means to be free. Wilbur leaves his pen before he can fully accept the complete responsibility he finds he must take on for his survival, and so he returns to the barn, happy in the reassurance that some of his needs will be met for him.
Explication: An explication is not a paraphrase, nor a summary, nor a rewording (though it may include succinct paraphrase), but a commentary revealing the meaning of the work. To this end it calls attention, as it proceeds, to the connotations of words, the function of rhymes, the shifts in point of view, the development of contrasts/polarities, and any other contributions to the meaning. cf close reading or explication de texte
Free Indirect Discourse: Moments in the narration where it is not clear whether the thoughts come from a character, the narrator or a combination of the two. In What Jamie Saw, "That very night-or was it early morning?-- some time of day or night that felt like it had no hour at all" (7). Free indirect discourse should not be confused with direct discourse or with indirect discourse.
Illusion: A perception, as of visual stimuli, that represents what is perceived in a way different from the way it is in reality. Elizabeth has the illusion that Zeely is a Watutsi queen. See the excerpts from Hamilton's article on "Illusion and Reality."
Imagination: Coleridge calls it "the shaping and modifying power" which enables a new reality to come into being. Shakespeare writes, "As imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poets' pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name." Consider imagination in relation to Elizabeth in Zeely, Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Jonas in The Giver, among other of our texts.
Intertext: the text within a text. Myth is often used as an intertext in children's and young adult literature. These do not have to be concrete myth sources, but can consist of mythical thinking, manifested in a myth-like organization of time-space relations, or the use of narrative components of myths. See Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising and Virginia Hamilton's works in general.
Irony: One needs to distinguish between three kinds of irony. Dramatic irony, found only in dramatic narratives, is not a figure but a kind of strategy; it established some important disparity betwen what the audience knows and what one or more characters in the narrative know. The classic example here is Oedipus in Oedipus Rex. It raises the question about the disparity between appearance and reality. Socratic irony, is also a strategy, but between a person's real and assumed character. Swift uses it in Tale of the Tub, but for Socrates, it is an argumentative strategy. Verbal irony is a figure; its essence is a disparity between what is said, and what is intended, or really thought. The essence of verbal irony is ambiguity. When one is ironic about a subject, one refuses to assent to the usual view of it, and at the same time one does not flatly condemn the usual view. We do not know, exactly, where the ironist stands.
Karass: a term for a disparate group of people linked together without their knowledge. Your family and friends would not be part of your karass. You wouldn't choose its membership, and you may never know who is in it or what its purpose is. (see Paul Fkeischman's Whirligig)
Kenotype: formed from the ancient Greek words kainos, meaning "new," and typos, meaning "form" or "imprint." "Kenotype," then, is literally a "new form," and in the system of culturological concepts it should stand beside "archetype," to which it offers a specific contrastive meaning. An example of a kenotype is the subway (see the link to the archetype of the underworld?), the bicycle or the computer or the television. Parrot in the Oven has many similies that use kenotypes are part of the comparison.
Litotes: this is when you understate an idea in order to convey the opposite idea. This is normally done through the use of a negative negative before one of the words in order to express a strong affirmative. This style is evident in Karen Hess's Out of the Dust.
Magic: Magic is referred to in The Secret Garden as a natural part of life's growth, that energy which cannot be touched or seen. In Harry Potter books, magic becomes an imaginative tool by which he and others confront the dark powers, magic is sometimes not understood. Magic is another kind of illusion. Magic as a continuum of imagination and infinite possibility is also used in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series.
Magical-realism: Fiction that maintains a discourse appropriate to an objective and realistic narrative, while recounting fantastic or supernatural events alongside commonplace happenings. Magic realism provides much of the power in a number of South American writers, notably Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967), but the technique has been used by Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Robert Kroetsch, Jack Hodgins and Peter Carey, among others.
Meontic and Mimetic Modes: Art is involved with "experienced reality. --or to adopt Auerbach's rubric, wth the 'representation of reality'--the way it is involved idivded into two contrasted relationships. In the first, artic imitates what is there in reality; in the second, it imitates what is not there. [. . .] ( Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin 383-85. The mimetic mirror reproduces and focuses on experienced reality; the meontic mode attempts to reproduce "what is not there" or what is imagined. The mimetic and meontic modes, though offering contrasting ways of depicting reality, should be viewed in terms of a continuum, rather than absolute opposition, to illuminate things of the spirit rather than material phenomena.
Meta-critical: A critical aspect that draws attention to its own critical apparatus. Meta means more comprehensive, transcending, offers an overarching view of various critical aspects. Meta means above or beyond..
Meta-fiction: Also called "sur-fiction," this is a type of fiction that draws attention to itself as such, severing the traditional mirror-like connections between art and life. Postmodern).
Metanarrative - in the terminology of postmodernism, the term 'narrative' or 'story' is used for what we might ordinarily call a 'theory' about the way the world operates. Many such 'theories' are ordinarily taken to be the objective 'truth'. We know, however, that there have been a variety of truths about the way things are. For example, the 'narrative' of pre-Newtonian physics was overturned by Newton and the 'narrative' of Newtonian physics was replaced by the 'narratives' of relativity and quantum mechanics. We may consider that each of these steps represents a step closer to the 'truth', but that view would be rejected by postmodernists who see such narratives as temporary until another one comes along. Sometimes metanarrative can be used to mean the way in which we do a certain task, such as read.

Metaphor:: A trope consisting of a comparison without using the words "like" or "as," as in "a mighty fortress is our God" or "my love is a rose." Generally, a metaphor poetically conveys an impression about something relatively unfamiliar by drawing an analogy between it and something familiar. The familiar thing is sometimes called the vehicle (i.e., the means by which the new impressions are conveyed), while the unfamiliar idea being expressed is sometimes called the tenor (sense 2). Conservative analysis of metaphor used to lead to conclusions about determinate meaning, but Jacques Derrida maintained that "metaphor is never innocent," implying that unforeseen meanings accrue, leaving the meaning indeterminant.
Metonymy: Like synecdoche, this term refers to figurative language that uses particular words to represent something else with which they are associated. Metonymy is when one term is substituted for another term with which it is closely associated ("crown" or "sceptre" stands duty for "monarch").
Mise-en-abyme: Literally, "placement en abyme," where "en abîme" itself refers to the habit of representing a small shield inside a larger one in traditional heralds and coats-of-arms. This device is often part of the text's self-reflexifivity. By extension, most any "story-within-a-story" situations can be called an example of mise-en-abyme. The device is especially common in modern literature, television and films, but it occasionally appears in art. See some examples in The View from Saturday.
Multistable Image: A symbol which evokes multiple meanings, and which can be viewed from a number of valid perceptions without the image itself altering its basic characteristics. Usually we employ this term in the attempt of avoiding a singular and rigid interpretation of a symbol. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The narrator describes the room containing the wardrobe; one of the details is "a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill" (5). The image could signify a type of fly, an actual bottle that is blue, an old sentry-soldier, and the name for a flower. A more accurate example can be found in Lawrence Yep's Dragonwings, in his depiction of the stained glass window. In Tuck Everlasting the ferris wheel as circle with a center is a multistable image. Related to the microscopic investigation of crystal in the field of science.
Narrator: One who communicates a story. There are many varieties of narrators and categories of narration. The narrator inThe Lion often interrupts his own story to give his viewpoints and comments to the reader. The narrator should not be confused with the author.
Palimpsest: A parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed out to make place for the second; a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing. Thomas DeQuincey uses this phrase as in What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain?
paraleipsis--pretended omission for rhetorical effect. (http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/rhetoric.html#45)
Paradigm: an example, a particular mental set of particulars.In science it refers to a set of tacit assumptions and beliefs within which research goes on. An dynamic working example.
Paradox: A paradox is a statement which contains apparently opposing or incongrous elements which, when read together, turn out to make sense. Emily Dickinson's poem "My Life Closed Twice Before its Close" contains a paradox in both the title and the first line. She says:
My life closed twice before its close
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me. . .
This statement is paradoxical in that there are separate meanings for the words closed" and "close"--Dickinson has had experiences in her life which she feels to be equivalent to life's true closing, death itself.
Patten's magic P's: perception, paradigm, polarity, problems, puzzles, patterns, paradox
Perception: Immediate or intuitive cognition or comprehension; a capacity to "see" in light of experience. Our perception including moral, psychological, and/or aesthetic qualities alters of our world according to our understanding, insight, and experience. In The Giver Jonas's perceptions of his family members and his community change.
Phalanx: a group or community to which one belongs but which one may not necessarily know personally.
Poetic faith: Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined this as "the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment." We suspend our comparing power to our comprehension of reality while we engage our imagination in the appreciation of a work of art.
Polysemous text: Roland Barthes (1974) alerted us to the notion that texts operated a plurality of codes that them open to a plurality of readings, and Umberto Eco (1981) offers the most extensive analysis of that plurality. Readers, he argues, have three options: 1) they can assume the ideology of the text and subsume it into their own reading; 2) they can miss or ignore the ideology of the text and import their own, thus producing "aberrant" readings--where "aberrant" means only different from the ones envisaged by the sender; or 3) they can question the text in order to reveal the underlying ideology.
Post-Modern narrative: see Metanarrative novelists who write specifically to reinvigorate the powers of language by dislodging it from conventional constraints. Such writers see this work as crucial to the fundamental work of making and renewing social codes. Postmodern can also be seen as the primary emblem for our fractured current existence, especially when viewed against our parents' "modern" world where meaning seemed consistent and ordered. Post-modernism reconceptualizes previously held notions of reality. see also Post Modern literature
Pretense: To cloak, to give a feigned appearance to, to pretend, profess, allege, esp. falsely. Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe behaves according a to pattern of pretense before his transformation at the climax of the story: "Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it" (2).
Pragmatographic: vivid description of an action or event
Prosopographia: description of imaginary persons or bodies.
Reader Supplementation: Instances in the text wherein the reader supplements information/emotion/attitude to what the author provides. An illustrative example of this strategy is in Lowry's The Giver, "It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to feel frightened" (1). The reader supplements his or her own associations involving December to what the author offers. Authors are aware of this tendency and exploit it to make their work more subtly powerful. Futhermore, Lowry depends on our supplementation in Jonas's perception of the apple. We know that it is red, but he does not yet know how to distinguish red from other colors. It isn't until Jonas mentions that he now can see the color red that we realize we have been supplementing information from our world. That is, we discover that the world in The Giver is a totally colorless world.
symbol: Symbol (Greek, `to throw together'):
something in the world of the senses, including an action, that manifests (reveals) or signifies (is a sign for or a pointer to) something abstract, otherworldly, or numinous. Samuel Johnson (1755) termed it "A type; that which comprehends in its figure a representation of something else." A word denotes, refers to, or labels something in the world, but a symbol, as a thing in the world (to which a word, of course, may point), has a concreteness not shared by language and points to something transcending ordinary experience. Any tree, for example, arguably symbolizes tree-ness, a Platonic form. Any image or action termed a Jungian archetype is also symbolic in that it manifests something in the collective unconscious of human beings. Writers use symbols normally when they believe in a transcendental reality. A metaphor compares two or more things that are no more and no less real than anything else in the world. For a metaphor to be symbolic, one of its pair of elements must manifest or reveal yet something else transcendental. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in Understanding Poetry (3rd edn., 1960) say that "The symbol may be regarded as a metaphor from which the first term has been omitted" (556). Taken from //www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ian/glossary.html. Glossary of Poetic Terms. See also Samuel Taylor Coleridge's own definition:
Synaesthesia: The term is applied in literature to the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter's voice upon entering the Beavers' hiding place is described as being "tired and pale in the darkness" (99). "Pale" is a sight adjective used to describe a sound, "Peter's voice."
Synecdoche: a part is used to signify the whole, as when a ship's captain calls out, "All hands on deck!" (in which "hand" signifies the whole person of each sailor.). P. B. Shelley's poem, "Ozymandias" is built upon the trope of synecdoche.
Tableau Vivant: A freeze-frame moment or living portrait in the story. The action appears to stop momentarily in the story. A visual image is presented with clarity. In Virginia Hamilton's Zeely, Elizabeth has several moments of this type of perception when she beholds Zeely.
Trope: Any of several types of diversion from the literal to the figurative. The so-called "four master tropes" are irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche) A few new ones have recently been invented: see aegis, catachresis, kenosis, perruque. cf figures of speech.
Utopia: An ideal place or state. Any vision of a socially and politically perfect society. From Greek roots, it derives its meaning from the words outopia, meaning "no place" and eutopia, meaning " a place where everything is right." In a sense, a utopian land in fiction becomes both a place that never quite existed as it is portrayed and a place where everything seems perfect. It is an imagined world.

HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

Australian History

Australian History
Early History | 17th Century | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | 21st Century
EARLY HISTORY
50,000 BC The first settlers are thought to have arrived around 50,000 years ago. This would have most likely been at a time when the sea levels were low, the land was more humid and animals larger.
Although much of Australia became populated, the central dry areas didn't attract settlers until around 25,000 years ago. The population grew proportionately quicker around 10,000 years ago as the climate improved.
How to Play the Didgeridoo

At the time of British settlement at Sydney Cove it is estimated that 300,000 aboriginal people, speaking around 250 languages inhabited Australia.
On arrival, finding no obvious political structure, the Europeans took the land as their own. The Indigenous people were driven out of their homes and many killed. Various new European diseases spread rapidly amongst the indigenous people, killing many. The introduction of feral and domestic animals contributed to the destruction of natural habitats.
Fighting wiped out the Aboriginal population in Tasmania and greatly reduced the numbers in the rest of Australia.
During the early part of the 20th century legislation's were passed to segregate and protect Aboriginals. This involved restrictions on where they could live and work and families being broken up.
After World War II, assimilation became the governments aim. All rights were taken away from the Aboriginals and attempts made to 'Europeanise' them.
During the 1960's the legislation was reviewed and the Federal Government passed legislation for all Aboriginals to be given citizen status. However, it wasn't until 1972 that the indigenous people were given back limited rights to their own land. The situation has been steadily improving for Australia's Indigenous people, although many feel more needs to be done.

17th CENTURY
1606 The first European sightings of Australia were made by a Dutchman called Willem Janszoon on the Duyfken (Little Dove). Janszoon sailed into the Australian waters charting 300 km of the coast on the journey. Janszoon also met with the Aboriginal people on the journey. Janszoon was the first recorded European to achieve such feats. Later that year Louis Vaez de Torres sailed through the Torres Strait, named after himself. Both Captains have been recorded as having sighted the Cape York Peninsula.
1642 Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman's, first journey to Australia. It was in 1644 that Abel Tasman established that Australia was made up of four coasts North, West, East and South. The Australian state of Tasmania was named after this famous explorer.

18th CENTURY
1770 Captain Cook lands in Botany Bay on the Eastern side of Australia in the ship named HM Bark Endeavour. and claims New South Wales for Britain.

1788 The First Fleet arrives at Sydney Cove under Captain Arthur Phillip to establish the first settlement in Australia. This was to be a penal colony - Sydney was founded. The date of his arrival, 26 January, went on to mark Australia Day.

19th CENTURY
1801 - 1899 The great age of exploration: coastal surveys (Bass, Flinders), interior (Sturt, Eyre, Leichhardt, Burke and Willis, McDouall Stuart, Forrest). Also the era of the bushrangers, overlanders, and squatters, and individuals such as William Buckley and Ned Kelly.
1803 Mathew Flinders completes the first voyage around Australia in the 'Investigator'.
1804 Castle Hill Rising by Irish convicts in New South Wales.

1813 Barrier of the Blue Mountains Crossed.

1825 Tasmania seceded from New South Wales.

1829 Western Australia formed.

1836 South Australia formed.

1840 - 1868 Convict transportation ended.
1851 - 1861 Gold rushes (Ballarat, Bendigo).

1851 Victoria seceded from New South Wales.

1855 Victoria achieved government.

1856 New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania achieved government.

1859 Queensland formed from New South Wales and achieved government.

1890 Western Australia achieved government.

1891 Depression gave rise to the Australian Labor Party.
1899 - 1900 South African War - forces offered by the individual colonies.

20th CENTURY
1901 Creation of the Commonwealth of Australia. This was a federation of the States of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.

1911 Site for capital at Canberra acquired.

1914 - 1918 World War I - Anzac troops in Europe including Gallipoli. Australia experiences her first major losses in a war during in 1915 on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.
1939 - 1945 World War II - Anzac troops in Greece, Crete, and N Africa (El Alamein) and the Pacific. The Japanese bomb Darwin in 1942.

1941 Curtin's appeal to USA for help in the World War marked the end of the special relationship with Britain.
1944 Liberal party founded by Menzies.
1948 - 1975 Two million new immigrants, the majority from continental Europe
1950 - 1953 Korean War - Australian troops part of the United Nations forces.
1964 - 1972 Vietnam War - Comonwealth troops in alliance with US forces.
1966 - 1974 Mineral boom typified by the Posiedon nickel mine.
1967 The ASEAN was established
1973 Britain entered the Common Market, and in the 1970's Japan became Australia's chief trading partner.
1974 Whitlam abolishes 'white Australia' policy.
1975 Constitutional crisis; Prime Minister Whitlam dismissed by the governor general.
1975 United Nations trust territory of Papua New Guinea became independent.
1975 The Liberal Party under Malcolm Fraser comes to power.
1978 Northern Territory achieved self-government.

1979 Opening of uranium mines in Northern Territory.

1983 Hawke convened first national economic summit - The Fraser Government is defeated in the election and the Australian Labour Party under Bob Hawke forms a government.
1988 Australia celebrates its Bicentennial - 200 years since the first European settlement.
1991 Paul Keating replaced Bob Hawke as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister.
1994 The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was established
1996 Labour Party ousted in general election by Liberal-National Coalition.
1996 John Howard replaced Paul Keating as Prime Minister.
1901 - 1999 Australian Prime Ministers of the 20th Century


21st CENTURY
2000 Australia hosts the 2000 Olympic Games.
2001 Australia celebrates the Centenary of the Federation of Australia.
2007 Liberal-National Coalition lost in the general election to the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
2007 Kevin Rudd replaced John Howard as Prime Minister.

HEART OF Darkness --Themes

HEART OF Darkness Themes
Major Themes

Groupthink and Stock Characters
This novella is unusual in that the author does not name most of the characters in his book, other than assigning them titles that describe their larger organizational goals. It is not quite an allegory, while he does allow them some individual characteristics of speech and dress, but they are for the most part stand-ins for larger groups. The obvious exception is Marlow, and his reaction against the colonial structures supported by people with names like “the Manager” and “the Lawyer” place him slightly outside this system. Groupthink is evident in named groups like the pilgrims and the natives. These groups have a few outstanding members, such as the native woman of arresting beauty or the red-haired pilgrim drunk with bloodthirstiness, but they mostly move together, make the same decisions, and have the same intentions. Conrad critiques such patterns, in which individual in a society think like other members of their group without stopping to think for themselves. Although Marlow is by no means a heroic character, Conrad does illustrate the need for individual thought by singling him out.

Primitivism
As the crew make their way up the river, they are traveling into the “heart of darkness.” The contradiction, however, is that Marlow also feels as if he were traveling back in time. When Conrad wrote this story, scientists were learning that Africa is the seat of human civilization, and this knowledge is reflected in the fact that the trees are (almost prehistorically) enormous on the route down the river. The paradox of the novel, however, is that by traveling backwards in time, the crew do not move closer to the innocence and purity of the "noble savage" but farther away from it. Words like “pestilent” and “sordid” are used again and again to describe the natives and their land. Conrad seems to claim that the Christian belief that prehistory was untouched by obscurity or evil is a fallacy. Instead, there is “the horror.” In contrast, it seems, is the more advanced civilization of the colonizers and visitors.

Uncertainty
Nothing in this novella is described in very concrete terms. Shores are hazy. Land looks like a spine sticking out from a man’s back but is not described in topographical terms. Marlow is obsessed with Kurtz before he even meets him, without a clear idea why. A sense of danger pervades the entire trip, and it is mostly dictated by uncertainty. The natives do not seem inherently threatening. On one occasion, they let fly a series of arrows, but these even look ineffectual to Marlow. They are threatening because they might be poisoned. Similarly, Marlow has no clear idea of what the natives might do to him if Kurtz gave them free rein, and it is possible that this uncertainty increases his fear. Kurtz himself is an uncertain figure, ruled as he is by two separate impulses, the noble and the destructive. At the beginning of the novella, the reader perceives that the former is his dominant (or only) characteristic. But with vicious scrawlings on his manuscript and his ruthlessness in extracting ivory from the land, Kurtz proves himself the latter. Marlow’s adherence to Kurtz until the end confuses the matter; one could judge him one way or the other. The idea of "darkness" expresses the theme of uncertainty in the novella.

Imperial Authority
Whatever the conditions in Africa may be, all of the characters agree that they are different from those of Europe. There is a feeling of anything-goes vigilantism that shifts the balance of power from the stewards in a “civilized” state (police, doctors, bureaucrats) to whoever is most threatening. Kurtz is physically quite a weak man, but he maintains enormous sway over the native population through his understanding of their language and his cultural and communication skills. He exploits their appreciation of him as an Other. Marlow’s men use a much more simple means of gaining authority, namely, firearms. This is the tragedy of imperialism in that the arrival of the white man heralds a new order, but in the creation of that order, they retain the tools and the authority. Black men in this book first appear as members of a chain gang, and they gain little power after that scene.

Religion
Although there is controversy over whether Conrad is critiquing colonialism or not, it is clear that he is critiquing religion. The two groups in the novel, the pilgrims and the natives, are linked by having religious beliefs, and the pilgrims seem at least as bloodthirsty as the natives. The rite in the woods that Marlow describes seems alien but certainly no more dangerous than the ambush. One of the seemingly admirable characteristics of Kurtz, as presented by Conrad, is that he seems just as compelled by African religion as by Christianity but seems beholden to neither. Marlow genuinely admires his ability to independently critique religions. He may not agree with Kurtz’s evaluation, but he respects Kurtz's ability to have his own opinions in the face of the various religious traditions he encounters.

Jewelry
Jewelry is a major presence in Heart of Darkeness. To begin with, it is the main reason for the presence of the colonists in Africa: they are there to strip the country of its ivory. There is a play on colors between the black people and this white valuable good. The most prestigious member of the African community and one of the only characters to be afforded individual characteristics by Conrad is the woman who is presumably Kurtz’s mistress. Her first appearance is impressive; she is covered in bangles and other “barbarous ornaments.” Her aspect has both attractiveness and ferocity, and she is the only character in the novella who wears jewelry. Despite it being the raison d’être of the novella, the other characters have little interest in jewelry, showing an almost Marxist detachment from the good they harvest.

Illness
Illness is a major factor in this novella. It appears in physical and mental forms. Marlow is hired to replace a man who committed suicide, and another instance of suicide is announced by a somber Swedish man. The first thing that Marlow does upon being hired is go to the doctor, who checks both his mental and physical health and provides a very gloomy prognosis. The specter of ill health, or of one’s body not standing up to the conditions, is a constant specter in the novella. The mental health issue is particular to Heart of Darkness, while the issue of wider health continues in the tradition of Victorian novels, in which men often travel to Africa only to come down with exotic diseases. In the end, it seems that Marlow is more mentally than physically taxed, while Kurtz is clearly both



Little Words, Big Ideas
Good vs. Evil
Much of Heart of Darkness is concerned with Marlow’s struggle to maintain his sense of morality as power conspiracies rage all around him and the mysterious figure of Kurtz piques his curiosi...
More about Good vs. Evil in Heart of Darkness
Man and the Natural World
Nature and civilization rather decisively represent the dichotomy of "primitive" non-Europeans and "cultured" Europeans. "Civilization" comes to refer to the supposed enlightenment and refinement o...
More about Man and the Natural World in Heart of Darkness
Race
The divide of the races into black and white adds complexity to Conrad’s theme of light versus darkness and good versus evil. The conventional use of white as good and black as evil is clearl...
More about Race in Heart of Darkness
Identity
Perhaps one of the most terrifying aspects of Heart of Darkness is the dehumanization of its characters. Conrad shows this by sucking the humanity out of his villains – the manager, the accou...
More about Identity in Heart of Darkness
Power
Many of Marlow’s crew have ambitions of moving up the corporate ladder of the Company. Insatiable greed for wealth and power defines their characters. This greed quickly demolishes any sense...
More about Power in Heart of Darkness
Women and Femininity
Marlow has a very specific and sexist attitude towards women. They play only minor roles in the novel and often live vicariously through their male counterparts. They are rarely given voices of the...
More about Women and Femininity in Heart of Darkness
Exploration
Curiosity is Marlow’s defining characteristic. It is his desire to explore and fill in the empty spaces on maps that first brings him into the interior. Then, his interest is piqued by multip...
More about Exploration in Heart of Darkness
Madness
The question of how and why one goes mad in the interior pervades the novel. Conrad suggests that the white man’s fear of Africa’s unexplored heart, her ‘savage’ people, and...
More about Madness in Heart of Darkness
Language and Communication
The articulateness and effectiveness of speech plays a large role in the novel. Good articulation and expression ensures understanding between two individuals. However, many of the characters suffe...
More about Language and Communication in Heart of Darkness
Fear
The white pilgrims go into the interior in constant fear of their surroundings. Their trepidation is so strong that they develop a paranoia of the wilderness – its eerie silences and sudden b...
More about Fear in Heart of Darkness
Fate and Free Will
Marlow’s journey towards the interior and towards Kurtz seems inevitable, as if Marlow is drawn nearer and nearer to the heart of darkness by his own morbid curiosity and by his childhood dri...
More about Fate and Free Will in Heart of Darkness
Time
Conrad plays with readers’ sense of time to emphasize certain points in the plot. Marlow tells his story aboard the Nellie so readers go with him (as well as his listeners) into the past. Sim...

Hamlet--Themes

Hamlet Themes
Little Words, Big Ideas
Madness
Madness – both real and feigned – is at the heart of the play. Hamlet's "antic disposition" has famously sparked a scholarly debate: Does Hamlet truly go "mad" or is it all an act? An i...
Revenge
Hamlet gears up to be a traditional bloody revenge play – and then it stops. The bulk of the play deals not with Hamlet's ultimately successful vengeance on his father's murderer, but with Ha...
Mortality
Hamlet's musings on suicide, especially the "to be or not to be" speech, are legendary and continue to direct discussions of the value of life and the mystery of death. But Hamlet himself never com...
Religion
Hamlet is not necessarily a play about "religion" but it does register many of religious ideologies and spiritual anxieties of the 16th century. Here we're talking about the effects of the Protesta...
Art and Culture
Literary critics consider Hamlet to be one of Shakespeare's most "self-reflexive" plays, which is to say that Hamlet self-consciously refers to the workings of the theater and also draws the audien...
Lies and Deceit
Hamlet, more than almost any character in literature, hates deception and craves honesty. It is one of the brilliant ironies of the play that Hamlet, an absolutist in his quest for truth, is trappe...
Sex
Hamlet's preoccupation with female sexuality seems to dominate much of the play. The young prince is disgusted by his aging mother's sexual appetite and his attitude eventually infects his relation...
Gender
"Frailty, thy name is woman," so says Hamlet in his first scene (1.2.6). Hamlet's attitude toward women is notoriously sexist and stems from his disgust at his mother's sexuality and seeming unfait...
Family
Family is a significant theme in Hamlet. The play is notorious for the way it dwells on the issue of incest – Gertrude's marriage to her dead husband's brother, Hamlet's fixation on his mothe...

Oedipus the King by Sophocles--THEMES, ANALYSIS

Oedipus and Themes
The story of Oedipus the King by Sophocles brings to light many themes, making it a truly great piece of literature. One theme that I could not help notice, due to its timely recurrences, was the idea of blindness. Over and over, the idea of being in darkness, being blind, seeing, etc. came up in key parts of the text.

First off, I will proceed to list every occurrence of the references to sight that I deem are important (sometimes being blind just means being blind!) as well as a bit of context. The passages with a "*" denote a message of extreme importance (in my opinion):

line 14: Oedipus speaking to the priests about him sensing trouble ahead; "I would be blind to misery,"

line 28-9: Priest responding to line 14; "Our city-look around you, see with your own eyes-our ship pitches wildly,"

line 70-1: Same subject as above; "I see-how could I fail to see what longings bring you here?"

line 119: Oedipus speaking of the killing of their former king; "I never saw the man myself."

line 150: Oedipus speaking of how he will try and solve the murder of their former king, Laius; "...I'll bring it all to light myself!"

line 216-7: Chorus pleading the gods for help; "O golden daughter of god, send rescue radiant as the kindness in your eyes!"

line 323: The leader of the chorus speaking of the blind prophet Tiresias; "Lord Tiresias sees with the eyes of Lord Apollo."

line 344-5: Oedipus speaking of Tiresias; "Blind as you are, you can feel all the more what sickness haunts our city."

*line 360: Tiresias speaking of the problems that the city wants solved; "How terrible-to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!"

line 425-7: Oedipus scolding Tiresias for accusing him of being the curse upon the town; "Blind, lost in the night, endless night that nursed you! You can't hurt me or anyone else who sees the light-you can never touch me."

line 441-2: Oedipus again, "going to town" on Tiresias; "...this fortune-teller peddling lies, eyes peeled for his own profit-seer blind in his craft!"

line 470-1: Tiresias "responding" to Oedipus's attacks; "You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption of your life,"

line 477-9: Same as 470-1; "...their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light!"

*line 517-9: Same as previous two quotes, this time foreshadowing Oedipus's fate; "Blind who now has eyes, beggar who now is rich, he will grope his way toward a foreign soil, a stick tapping before him step by step."

line 552-3: The chorus is expressing concern over the fight which has just ensued between Oedipus and Tiresias; "...I'm lost, and the wings of dark foreboding beating-I cannot see what's come, what's still to come..."

line 567-70: Same as previous quote; "No, not till I see these charges proved will I side with his accusers. We saw him then, when the she-hawk swept against him, saw with our own eyes his skill, his brilliant triumph..."

line 672-3: Creon, after having been accused of killing Laius and treason, Creon defends himself; "A man of sense, someone who sees things clearly would never resort to treason."

line 822: Oedipus infers to his wife (and mother...) Jocasta that he may be cause of the trouble, prompting Jocasta to be afraid; "I shudder to look at you."

line 878-80: Oedipus is recalling past events in his life, how he was prophesized to be the downfall of his parents; "...always running toward some place where I would never see the shame of all those oracles come true."

line 919-20: Oedipus prays to the gods that he is not the victim of fate (that he will bring the downfall of his royal family); "Oh no, not that you pure and awesome gods, never let me see that day!"

*line 1070-1: Jocasta gives us her theory on man and wisdom; "Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark."

line 1168-9: Oedipus wants the truth about his mysterious past; "I must know it all, must see the truth at last."

line 1190: Oedipus foreshadows his own fate; "I'll never see myself disgraced."

*line 1306-8: Oedipus finds out the truth that he 1) killed his father, Laius, the former king, and 2) he slept with his mother; "O god-all come true, all burst to light! O light-now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last-"

line 1315-7: The chorus sums up and philosophizes on the fate of men; "...who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision? And the vision no sooner dawns than dies blazing into oblivion."

*line 1341: Chorus gives us a nice summary of what has happened; "...Time, all-seeing Time has dragged you to the light..."

*line 1350: Chorus foreshadows the fate of Oedipus; "...and now you bring down night upon my eyes."

*line 1358-9: The messenger adds to the chorus's speech; "Such things it hides, it soon will bring to light-terrible things, and none done blindly now..."

**line 1402-09: In the climax of the play, Oedipus finds out the truth about his past. This is probably one of the most important (if not the most important) sections of this play; "He rips off her brooches, the long gold pins holding her robes-and lifting them high, looking straight up into the points, he digs them down the sockets of his eyes, crying, 'You, you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused! Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen, blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind from this hour on! Blind in the darkness-blind!'"

*line1432-42: The chorus is talking about the wretched site of Oedipus after having gouged out his own eyes; "O the terror, the suffering, for all the world to see, the worst terror that ever met my eyes." "I pity you but I can't bear to look." "...so much fascinates my eyes, but you... I shudder at the sight."

line 1498: The chorus, speaking about Oedipus, falls prey to the same ignorance that Oedipus does earlier in the play; "Better to die than be alive and blind."

--------------------------------

After seeing almost all of the quotes having to deal with sight, darkness, blindness, etc. it is obvious that they represent something deeper than their literal meaning. Most of the early quotes using the word "blind", represent the paradox that is presented with Oedipus and the "blind seer" Tiresias. Oedipus keeps pointing out the fact that Tiresias is blind, but fails to see (impossible to escape the word...) that, in fact, he himself is blind to the circumstances that are going on. Throughout the entire play, the only one who can clearly "see" is Tiresias. The chorus, Oedipus and the others can all "see" literally, but cannot see the "truth".

The double asterisk passages are of special importance. They parallel Plato's Allegory of the Cave practically to perfection. Line 1306-8, "O god-all come true, all burst to light! O light-now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last-" to me, symbolizes Oedipus having broken the chains of the cave, bursting towards the light (the truth). Since the light is so bright, he is blinded; he suddenly does not want to see the light, so he gouges out his own eyes. After having done so, Oedipus has descended back into the cave, into darkness...

In lines1432-42, "O the terror, the suffering, for all the world to see, the worst terror that ever met my eyes." "I pity you but I can't bear to look." the people of the town cannot look at the light (the truth), that is Oedipus; in fact, they state that, "...so much fascinates my eyes, but you... I shudder at the sight." This sounds exacly like the shadows playing upon the wall of the cave that occupies their time; they cannot look away from the shadow, and cannot look at the light-the light would bring them pain. In the final quote that I have added, line 1498, "Better to die than be alive and blind.", the crowd finalizes their ignorance on the subject of truth. Since one is blinded by the light after emerging from the cave, the people would rather die having been occupied by shadows than to face the real truth.

about MARSH BIRD

This is the story of Dhurgham, a young Iraqi who has lost everything. A powerful, exquisitely written novel that gives a human face to the experiences of exile and migration.
Description
Dhurgham As-Samarra'i is a twelve-year-old boy, the youngest child in a middle-class Baghdadi family. He finds himself at the Great Mosque in Damascus in Syria, not knowing what has happened to his parents and sister who fled Baghdad with him. The only thing he knows is that he was told that if the family became separated they were to meet at the Mosque. Alone, he waits and waits.
This is the story of what befalls Dhurgham after he realises his family won't be turning up; it is the story of his journey into adulthood, his journey through bitterness to forgiveness, and his journey from Iraq to Syria, to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and beyond.
Detained after arriving in Australia, Dhurgham, resilient yet unable to deal with his past, becomes an untried criminal existing in limbo as his file is processed. Fleetingly, New Zealand offers a refuge, family and affection but he is caught again in a nightmare of red-tape and confinement until his hope turns into anger and his past must be faced and resolved.
What do you do when you belong nowhere, with no family, no homeland, and no hope for the future? Who do you become?
A searingly honest story about separation, journeys and unbearable injustice.
Awards
The Marsh Birds won the Asher literary award in 2005 & has been shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Festival Awards for Literature, the NSW Premier's Literature Awards & the Colin Roderick Award.*
Sho
About Eva Sallis
Eva Sallis was born in Bendigo. She has an MA in literature and a PhD in comparative literature from The University of Adelaide. She won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1997 for her first novel, Hiam. Eva's second novel, The City of Sealions, was published in 2002, followed by the winner of the Steele Rudd Award, Mahjar in 2003 and Fire Fire in 2004.
An Iraqi boy undergoes a harrowing series of trials in Sallis's fifth novel, a harsh but only partially convincing indictment of the author's native Australia's indifference to political refugees. Twelve-year-old Dhurgham, whose well-to-do father runs afoul of the Hussein regime, gets separated from his family while fleeing Iraq and waits for them for weeks at the Great Mosque in Damascus. Eventually, he is taken in by a Syrian man named Hosni, a pedophile who steals Dhurgham's money and forces the boy into an increasingly abusive relationship that lasts five years, until Hosni fears "the threat of Dhurgham's manhood disrupting everything." Hosni sends Dhurgham to Australia, where he is placed in the Mawirrigun detention camp with hundreds of other Muslim refugees. Dhurgham, now 17 and with his refugee status in limbo, vacillates between violence and depression, ultimately launching a hunger strike that gets him transferred to New Zealand. There, he attempts to rejoin society, but the cultural differences may be too great to overcome. Sallis is well known in Australia for her politically charged fiction (Mahjar and The City of Sealions also deal with the intersection of Australia and the Middle East), but she overplays her hand, creating a portrait that is sympathetic but without much nuance. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This novel opens with Dhurgham, 12, waiting for his family at the Great Mosque in Damascus. They had escaped from Iraq together, and his parents told him that if they became separated, they should meet up at the mosque. When they fail to show up, the boy begins a harrowing journey as he tries to build a new life for himself. He spends several years in a relentlessly bleak refugee detention camp in the Australian desert. When he finally manages to escape to New Zealand, he finds a home with a family who showers him with good intentions. Dhurgham allows himself to hope and to forgive. As he approaches adulthood, however, his New Zealand hosts become fearful that any Middle Eastern male could become a danger to them. The young man now believes his past may be inescapable. The author explores themes of exile and belonging accessibly and artistically. Her writing is not sentimental, yet is deeply felt and relevant. Readers will gain insight into the plight of modern-day asylum seekers, an important contemporary issue.–Susanne Bardelson, Kitsap Regional Library, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
As twelve-year-old Dhurgham As-Samarra'i waits at the mosque where his family was supposed to meet if separated during their attempt to flee Baghdad, he realizes that no one else is coming to meet him. Following Dhurgham, as he builds a new life for himself with no homeland, family, or hope for the future, this searing and honest novel about separation, journey, and justice probes, questions, illuminates, and humanizes important moral and social issues.
Dhurgham As-Samarra'i is a 12-year-old boy, the youngest child in a middle-class Baghdadi family. He finds himself at the Great Mosque in Damascus in Syria, not knowing what has happened to his parents and sister who fled Baghdad with him. The only thing he knows is that he was told that if the family became separated they were to meet at the Mosque. Alone, he waits and waits.

About the Author

Eva Sallis was born in Bendigo. She has an MA in literature and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Adelaide. She won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1997 for her first novel, Hiam. Eva's second novel, The City of Sealions, was published in 2002, followed by the winner of the Steele Rudd Award, Mahjar in 2003 and Fire Fire in 2004.
Dhurgham al-Samarra'i is a twelve-year-old boy, the youngest child in a middle-class Baghdadi family. He finds himself at the Great Mosque in Damascus in Syria, not knowing what has happened to his parents and sister who fled Baghdad with him. The only thing he knows is that he was told that if the family became separated they were to meet at the Mosque. Alone, he waits and waits.

This is the story of what befalls Dhurgham after he realises his family won't be turning up
it is the story of his journey into adulthood, his journey through bitterness to forgiveness, and his journey from Iraq to Syria, to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

Detained after arriving in Australia, Dhurgham, resilient yet unable to deal with his past, becomes an untried criminal existing in limbo as his file is processed. Fleetingly, New Zealand offers a refuge, family and affection but he is caught again in a nightmare of red-tape and confinement until his hope turns into anger and his past must be faced and resolved.

What do you do when you belong nowhere, with no family, no homeland, and no hope for the future? Who do you become?

A searingly honest story about separation, journeys and unbearable injustice.

EVERYMAN, A MORALITY PLAY

EVERYMAN, A MORALITY PLAY

HERE BEGINETH A TREATISE HOW THE HIGH FATHER OH HEAVEN SENDETH DEATH TO SUMMON EVERY CREATURE TO COME AND GIVE ACCOUNT OF THEIR LIVES IN THIS WORLD AND IS IN MANNER OF A MORAL PLAY.

THE SUMMONING

Messenger: I pray you all give your audience,
And here this matter with reverence,
By figure a moral play-
The Summoning of Everyman called it is,
That of our lives and ending shows
How transitory we be all day.
This matter is wonderous precious,
But the intent of it is more gracious,
And sweet to bear away.
The story saith,-Man, in the beginning,
Look well, and take good heed to the ending,
Be you never so gay!
Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet,
Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep,
When the body lieth in clay.
Here shall you see how Fellowship and Jollity,
Both Strength, Pleasure, and Beauty,
Will fade from thee as flower in May.
For ye shall here, how our heavenly king
Calleth Everyman to a general reckoning:
Give audience, and here what he doth say.

God: I perceive here in my majesty,
How that all the creatures be to me unkind,
Living without dread in worldly prosperity:
Of ghostly sight the people be so blind,
Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;
In worldly riches is all their mind,
They fear not my rightwiseness, the sharp rod;
My law that I shewed, when I for them died,
They forget clean, and shedding of my blood red;
I hanged between two, it cannot be denied;
To get them life I suffered to be dead;
I healed their feet; with thorns hurt was my head:
I could do no more than I did truly,

And now I see the people do clean forsake me.
They use the seven deadly sins damnable;
As pride, covetise, wrath, and lechery,
Now in the world be made commendable;
And thus they leave of angels the heavenly company;
Everyman liveth so after his own pleasure,
And yet of their life they be nothing sure:
I see the more that I them forbear
The worse they be from year to year;
All that liveth appaireth fast, [appaireth="is impaired"]

Therefore I will in all the haste
Have a reckoning of Everyman's person
For and I leave the people thus alone
In their life and wicked tempests,
Verily they will become much worse than beasts;
For now one would by envy another up eat;
Charity they all do clean forget.

I hope well that Everyman
In my glory should make his mansion,
And thereto I had them all elect;
But now I see, like traitors deject,
They thank me not for the pleasure that I to them meant,
Nor yet for their being that I them have lent;
I proffered the people great multitude of mercy,
And few there be that asketh it heartily;
They be so cumbered with worldly riches,
That needs on them I must do justice,
On Everyman living without fear.

Where art thou, Death, thou mighty messenger?

Death: Almighty God, I am here at your will,
Your commandment to fulfil.

God: Go thou to Everyman,
And show him in my name
A pilgrimage he must on him take,
Which he in no wise may escape;
And that he bring with him a sure reckoning
Without delay or any tarrying.

Death: Lord, I will in the world go run over all,
And cruelly outsearch both great and small;
Every man will I beset that liveth beastly
Out of God's laws, and dreadeth not folly;
He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart,
His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart,
Except that alms be his good friend,
In hell for to dwell, world without end.
Lo, yonder I see Everyman walking;
Full little he thinketh on my coming;
His mind is on fleshly lust and his treasure,
And great pain it shall cause him to endure
Before the Lord Heaven King.

Everyman, stand still; whither art thou going
Thus gaily? Hast thou thy Maker forget?

Everyman: Why askst thou?
Wouldest thou wete? [wete="know"]

Death: Yea, sir, I will show you;
In great haste I am sent to thee
From God out of his great majesty.

Everyman: What, sent to me?

Death: Yea, certainly.
Though thou have forget him here,
He thinketh on thee in the heavenly sphere,
As, or we depart, thou shalt know.

Everyman: What desireth God of me?

Death: That shall I show thee;
A reckoning he will needs have
Without any longer respite.

Everyman: To give a reckoning longer leisure I crave;
This blind matter troubleth my wit.

Death: On thee thou must take a long journey:
Therefore thy book of count with thee thou bring;
For turn again thou can not by no way,
And look thou be sure of thy reckoning:
For before God thou shalt answer, and show
Thy many bad deeds and good but few;
How thou hast spent thy life, and in what wise,
Before the chief lord of paradise.
Have ado that we were in that way,
For, wete thou well, thou shalt make none attournay. [attournay="mediator"]

Everyman: Full unready I am such reckoning to give
I know thee not: what messenger art thou?

Death: I am Death, that no man dreadeth.
For every man I rest and no man spareth;
For it is God's commandment
That all to me should be obedient.

Everyman: O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind;
In thy power it lieth me to save,
Yet of my good will I give thee, if ye will be kind,
Yea, a thousand pound shalt thou have,
And defer this matter till another day.

Death: Everyman, it may not be by no way;
I set not by gold, silver nor, riches,
Ne by pope, emperor, king, duke, ne princes.
For and I would receive gifts great,
All the world I might get;
But my custom is clean contrary.
I give thee no respite: come hence, and not tarry.

Everyman: Alas, shall I have no longer respite?
I may say Death giveth no warning:
To think on thee, it maketh my heart sick,
For all unready is my book of reckoning.
But twelve year and I might have abiding,
My counting book I would make so clear,
That my reckoning I should not need to fear.
Wherefore, Death, I pray thee, for God's mercy,
Spare me till I provided of remedy.

Death: Thee availeth not to cry, weep, and pray:
But haste thee lightly that you were gone the journey,
And prove thy friends if thou can.
For, wete thou well, the tide abideth no man,
And in the world each living creature
For Adam's sin must die of nature.

Everyman: Death, if I should this pilgrimage take,
And my reckoning surely make,
Show me, for saint charity,
Should I not come again shortly?

Death: No, Everyman; and thou be once there,
Thou mayst never more come here,
Trust me verily.

Everyman: O gracious God, in the high seat celestial,
Have mercy on me in this most need;
Shall I have no company from this vale terrestrial
Of mine acquaintance that way to me lead?

Death: Yea, if any be so hardy
That would go with thee and bear thee company.
Hie thee that you were gone to God's magnificence,
Thy reckoning to give before his presence.
What, weenest thou thy life is given thee,
And thy worldly goods also?

Everyman: I had went so verily.

Death: Nay, nay; it was but lent thee;
For as soon as thou art go,
Another awhile shall have it, and then go therefor
Even as thou hast done.
Everyman, thou art mad; thou hast thou wits five,
And here on earth will not amend thy life,
For suddenly I do come.

Everyman: O wretched caitiff, whither shall I flee,
That I might scape this endless sorrow!
Now, gentle Death, spare me till to-morrow,
That I may amend me
With good advisement.

Death: Nay, thereto I will not consent,
Nor no man will I respite,
But to the heart suddenly I shall smite
Without any advisement.
And now out of thy sight I will me hie;
See thou make thee ready shortly,
For thou mayst say this is the day
That no man living may escape away.

Everyman; Alas, I may well weep with sighs deep;
Now have I no manner of company
To help me in my journey, and me to keep;
And also my writing is full unready.
How shall I do now for to excuse me?
I would to God I had never be gete! [gete="been born"]
To my soul a great profit it had be;
For now I fear pains huge and great.
The time passeth; Lord, help that all wrought;
For though I mourn it availeth nought.

The day passeth, and is almost a-go;
I wot not well what for to do.
To whom were I best my complaint do make?
What, and I to Fellowship thereof spake,
And show him of this sudden chance?
For in him is all my affiance;
We have in the world so many a day
Be on good friends in sport and play.
I see him yonder, certainly;
I trust that he will bear me company;
Therefore to him will I speak to ease my sorrow.

Well met, good Fellowship, and good morrow!

Fellowship: Everyman, good morrow by this day.
Sir, why lookest thou so piteously?
If anything be amiss, I pray thee, me say,
That I may help to remedy.

Everyman: Yea, good Fellowship, yea,
I am in great jeopardy.

Fellowship: My true friend, show me your mind;
I will not forsake thee, unto my life's end,
In the way of good company.

Everyman: That was well spoken, and lovingly.

Fellowship: Sir, I must needs know your heaviness;
I have pity to see you in any distress;
If any have you wronged ye shall revenged be,
Though I on the ground be slain for thee,-
Though that I know before that I should die.

Everyman: Verily, Fellowship, gramercy.

Fellowship: Tush! by thy thanks I set not a straw.
Show me your grief, and say no more.

Everyman: If I my heart should to you break,
And then you to turn your mind from me,
And would not me comfort, when you here me speak,
Then should I ten times sorrier be.

Fellowship: Sir, I say as I will do in deed.

Everyman: Then be you a good friend at need;
I have found you true here before.

Fellowship: And so ye shall evermore;
For, in faith, and thou go to Hell
I will not forsake thee by the way!

Everyman: Ye speak like a good friend; I believe you well;
I shall deserve it, and I may.

Fellowship: I speak of no deserving, by this day.
For he that will say and nothing do
Is not worthy with good company to go;
Therefore show me the grief of your mind,
As to your friend most loving and kind.

Everyman: I shall show you how it is;
Commanded I am to go on a journey,
A long way, hard and dangerous,
And give a strait count without delay
Before the high judge Adonai. [Adonai="God"]
Wherefore I pray you bear me company,
As ye have promised, in this journey.

Fellowship: That is a matter indeed! Promise is duty,
But, and I should take such a voyage on me,
I know it well, it should be to my pain:
Also it make me afeard, certain.
But let us take counsel here as well we can,
For your words would fear a strong man.

Everyman: Why, ye said, If I had need,
Ye would me never forsake, quick nor dead,
Though it were to hell truly.

Fellowship: So I said, certainly,
But such pleasures be set aside, thee sooth to say:
And also, if we took such a journey,
When should we come again?

Everyman: Nay, never again till the day of doom.

Fellowship: In faith, then will not I come there!
Who hath you these tidings brought?

Everyman: Indeed, Death was with me here

Fellowship: Now, by God that all hath brought,
If Death were the messenger,
For no man that is living to-day
I will not go that loath journey-
Not for the father that begat me!

Everyman: Ye promised other wise, pardie.

Fellowship: I wot well I say so truly;
And yet if thou wilt eat, and drink, and make good cheer,
Or haunt to women, the lusty companion,
I would not forsake you, while the day is clear,
Trust me verily!

Everyman: Yea, thereto ye would be ready;
To go to mirth, solace, and play,
Your mind will sooner apply
Than to bear me company in my long journey.

Fellowship: Now, in good faith, I will not that way.
But and thou wilt murder, or any man kill,
In that I will help thee with a good will!

Everyman: O that is a simple advice indeed!
Gentle fellow, help me in my necessity;
We have loved long, and now I need,
And now, gentle Fellowship, remember me.

Fellowship: Whether ye have loved me or no,
By Saint John, I will not with thee go.

Everyman: Yet I pray thee, take the labour, and do so much for me
To bring me forward, for saint charity,
And comfort me till I come without the town.

Fellowship: Nay, and thou would give me a new gown,
I will not a foot with thee go;
But and you had tarried I would not have left thee so.
And as now, God speed thee in thy journey,
For from thee I will depart as fast as I may.

Everyman: Whither away, Fellowship? Will you forsake me?

Fellowship: Yea, by my fay, to God I betake thee.

Everyman: Farewell, good Fellowship; for this my heart is sore;
Adieu for ever, I shall see thee no more.

Fellowship: In faith, Everyman, farewell now at the end;
For you I will remember that parting is mourning.

Everyman: Alack! Shall we thus depart indeed?
Our Lady, help, without any more comfort,
Lo, Fellowship forsaketh me in my most need:
For help in this world whither shall I resort?
Fellowship herebefore with me would merry make;
And now little sorrow for me doth he take.
It is said, in prosperity men friends may find,
Which in adversity be fully unkind.

Now whither for succour shall I flee,
Sith that Fellowship hath forsaken me?
To my kinsmen I will truly,
Praying them to help me in my necessity;
I believe that they will do so,
For kind will creep where it may not go.

I will go say, for yonder I see them go.
Where be ye now, my friends and kinsmen?

Kindred: Here be we now at your commandment.
Cousin, I pray you show us your intent
In any wise, and not spare.

Cousin: Yea, Everyman, and to us declare
If ye be disposed to go any whither,
For wete you well, we will live and die together.

Kindred: In wealth and woe we will with you hold,
For over his kin a man may be bold.

Everyman: Gramercy, my friends and kinsmen kind.
Now shall I show you the grief of my mind:
I was commanded by a messenger,
That is a high king's chief officer;
He bade me go on a pilgrimage to my pain,
And I know well I shall never come again;
Also I must give a reckoning straight,
For I have a great enemy, that hath me in wait,
Which intendeth me for to hinder.

Kindred: What account is that which ye must render?
That would I know.

Everyman: Of all my works I must show
How I have lived and my days spent;
Also of ill deeds, that I have used
In my time, sith life was me lent;
And of all virtues that I have refused.
Therefore I pray you thither with me,
To help to make account, for saint charity.

Cousin: What, to go thither? Is that the matter?
Nay, Everyman, I had liefer fast bread and water
All this five year and more.

Everyman: Alas, that ever I was bore!
For now shall I never be merry
If that you forsake me.

Kindred: Ah, sir; what, ye be a merry man!
Take good heart to you, and make no moan.
But as one thing I warn you, by Saint Anne,
As for me, ye shall go alone.

Everyman: My Cousin, will you not with me go.

Cousin: No by our Lady; I have the cramp in my toe.
Trust not to me, for, so God me speed,
I will deceive you in your most need.

Kindred: It availeth not us to tice.
Ye shall have my maid with all my heart;
She loveth to go to feasts, there to be nice,
And to dance, and abroad to start:
I will give her leave to help you in that journey,
If that you and she may agree.

Everyman: Now show me the very effect of your mind.
Will you go with me, or abide behind?

Kindred: Abide behind? Yea, that I will and I may!
Therefore farewell until another day.

Everyman: How should I be mary or glad?
For fair promises to me make,
But when I have most need, they me forsake.
I am deceived; that maketh me sad

Cousin: Cousin Everyman, farewell now,
For varily I will not go with you;
Also of mine an unready reckoning
I have to account; therefore I make tarrying.
Now, God keep thee, for now I go.

Everyman: Ah, Jesus, is all come hereto?
Lo, fair words maketh fools feign;
They promise and nothing will do certain.
My kinsmen promised me faithfully
For to abide with me steadfastly,
And now fast away do they flee:

Even so Fellowship promised me.
What friend were best me of to provide?
I lose my time here longer to abide.

Yet in my mind a thing there is;-
All my life I have loved riches;
If that my good now help me might,
He would make my heart full light.
I will speak to him in this distress.-
Where art thou, my Goods and riches?

Goods: Who calleth me? Everyman? What hast thou hast!
I lie here in corners, trussed and piled so high,
And in chest I am locked so fast,
Also sacked in bags, thou mayst see with thine eye,
I cannot stir; in packs low I lie.
What would ye have, lightly me say.

Everyman: Come hither, Goods, in all the hast thou may,
For of counsel I must desire thee.

Goods: Sir, and ye in the world have trouble or adversity,
That can I help you to remedy shortly.

Everyman: It is another disease that grieveth me;
In this world it is not, I tell thee so.
I am sent for another way to go,
To give a straight account general
Before the highest Jupiter of all;
And all my life I have had joy and pleasure in thee.
Therefore I pray thee go with me,
For, peradventure, thou mayst before God Almighty
My reckoning help to clean and purify;
For it is said ever among,
That money maketh all right that is wrong.

Goods: Nay, Everyman, I sing another song,
I follow no man in such voyages;
For and I went with thee
Thou shouldst fare much the worse for me;
For because on me thou did set thy hand,
Thy reckoning I have made blotted and blind,
That thine account thou cannot make truly;
And that hast thou for the love of me.

Everyman: That would grieve me full sore,
When I should come to that fearful answer.
Up, let us go thither together.

Goods: Nay, not so, I am, to brittle, I may not endure;
I will follow no man one foot, be ye sure.

Everyman: Alas, I have thee loved, and had great pleasure
All my life-days on good and treasure.

Goods: That is to thy damnation without lesing,
For my love is contrary to the love everlasting.
But if thou had loved moderately during,
As, to the poor give part of me,
Then shouldst thou not in this dolour be,
Nor in this great sorrow care.

Everyman: Lo, now was I deceived or was I ware,
And all may wyte my spending time. [wyte="blame"]

Goods: What, weenest thou that I am thine?

Everyman: I had wend so.

Goods: Nay, Everyman, say no;
As for a while I was lent thee,
A season thou hast had me in prosperity;
My condition is man's soul to kill;
If I save one, a thousand I do spill;
Weenest thou that I will follow thee?
Nay, from this world, not verrily.

Everyman: I had wend otherwise.

Goods: Therefore to thy soul Good is a thief;
For when thou art dead, this is my guise
Another to deceive in the same wise
As I have done thee, and all to his soul's reprief.

Everyman: O false Good, cursed thou be!
Thou traitor to God, that hast deceived me,
And caught me in thy snare.

Goods: Marry, thou brought thyself in care,
Whereof I am glad,
I must needs laugh, I cannot be sad.

Everyman: Ah, Good, thou hast had long my heartly love;
I gave thee that which should be the Lord's above.
But wilt thou not go with me in deed?
I pray thee truth to say.

Goods: No, so God me speed,
Therefore farewell, and have good day.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Everyman: O, to whom shall I make my moan
For to go with me in that heavy journey?
First Fellowship said he would go with me gone;
His words were very pleasant and gay,
But afterward he left me alone.

Then spake I to my kinsmen all in despair,
And also they gave me words fair,
They lacked no fair speaking,
But all forsake me in the ending.

Then went I to my Goods that I loved best,
In hope to have comfort, but there had I least;
For my Goods sharply did me tell
That he bringeth many to hell.

Then of myself I was ashamed,
And so I am worthy to be blamed;
Thus may I well myself hate.
Of whom shall now counsel take?

I think that I shall never speed
Till that I go to my Good-Deed,
But alas, she is so weak,
That she can neither go nor speak;
Yet I will venture on her now.-
My Good-Deeds, where be you?

Good-Deeds: Here I lie cold in the ground;
Thy sins hath me sore bound,
That I cannot stir.

Everyman: O, Good-Deeds, I stand in fear;
I must you pray counsel,
For help now should come right well.

Good-Deeds: Everyman, I have understanding
That ye be summoned account to make
Before Messiahs, of Jerusalem King;
And if you do by me that journey what you will I take.

Everyman: Therefore I come to you, my moan to make;
I pray you, that ye will go with me.

Good-Deeds: I would full fain, but I cannot stand verily.

Everyman: Why, is there anything on you fall?

Good-Deeds: Yea, sir, I may thank you of all;
If ye had perfectly cheered me,
Your book of account now full ready had be.
Look, the books of your works and deeds eke;
Oh, see how they lie under the feet,
To your soul's heaviness.

Everyman: Our Lord Jesus, help me!
For one letter here I can not see.

Good-Deeds: There is a blind reckoning in time of distress!

Everyman: Good-Deeds, I pray you, help me in this need,
Or else I am forever damned indeed;
Therefore help me to make reckoning
Before the redeemer of all thing,
That king is, and was, and ever shall.

Good-Deeds: Everyman, I am sorry for your fall,
And fain would I help you, and I were able.

Everyman: Good-Deeds, you counsel I pray you give me.

Good-Deeds: That shall I do verily;
Though that on my feet I may not go,
I have a sister, that shall with you also,
Called Knowledge, which shall you abide,
To help you make that dreadful reckoning.

Knowledge: Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side.

Everyman: In good condition I am now in every thing,
And am wholly content with this good thing;
Thanked be God my creator.

Good-Deeds: And when he hath brought thee there,
Where thou shalt heal thee of thy smart,
Then go with your reckoning and your Good-Deeds together
For to make you joyful at heart
Before the blessed Trinity.

Everyman: My Good-Deeds, gramercy;
I am well content, certainly,
With your words sweet.

Knowledge: Now we go together lovingly,
To Confession, that cleansing river.

Everyman: For joy I weep; I would we were there;
But, I pray you, give me cognition
Where dwelleth that holy man, Confession.

Knowledge: in the house of salvation:
We shall find him in that place,
That shall us comfort by God's grace.
Lo, this is Confession; kneel down and ask mercy,
For he is in good conceit with God almighty.

Everyman: O glorious fountain that all uncleanness doth clarify,
That on me no sin may be seen;
I come with Knowledge for my redemption,
Repent with hearty and full contrition;
For I am commanded a pilgrimage to take,
And great accounts before God to make.
Now, I pray you, Shrift, mother of salvation,
Help my good deeds for my piteous exclamation.

Confession: I know your sorrow well, Everyman;
Because with Knowledge ye come to me,
I will you comfort as well as I can,
And a precious jewel I will give thee,
Called penance, wise voider of adversity;
Therewith shall your body chastised be,
With abstinence and perseverance in God's service:
Here shall you receive that scourge of me,
Which is penance strong, that ye must endure,
To remember thy Saviour was scourged for thee
With sharp scourges, and suffered it patiently;
So must thou, or thou scape that that painful pilgrimage;
Knowledge, keep him in this voyage,
And by that time Good-Deeds will be with thee.

But in any wise, be sure of mercy,
For your time draweth fast, and ye will saved be;
Ask God mercy, and He will grant truly,
When with the scourge of penance man doth him bind,
The oil of forgiveness then shall he find.

Everyman: Thanked be God for his gracious work!
For now I will my penance begin;
This hath rejoiced and lighted my heart,
Though the knots be painful and within.

Knowledge: Everyman, look your penance that ye fulfil,
What pain that ever it to you be,
And Knowledge shall give you counsel at will,
How your accounts you shall make clearly,

Everyman: O eternal God, O heavenly figure,
O way of rightwiseness, O goodly vision,
Which descended down in a virgin pure
Because he would Everyman redeem,
Which Adam forfeited by his disobedience:
O blessed Godhead, elect and high-divine,
Forgive my grievous offence;
Here I cry thee mercy in this presence.

O ghostly treasure, O ransomer and redeemer
Of all the world, hope and conductor,
Mirror of joy, and founder of mercy,
Which illumineth heaven and earth thereby,
Hear my clamorous complain, though it late be;
Receive my prayers; unworthy in this heavy life,
Though I be, a sinner most abominable,
Yet let my name be written in Moses' table;
O Mary, pray to the Maker of all thing,
Me for to help at my ending,
And same me from the power of my enemy,
For Death assaileth me strongly,
And, Lady, that I may by means of they prayer
Of your Son's glory to be partaker,
By the means of h is passion I it crave,
I beseech you, help my soul to save.

Knowledge, give me the scourge of penance;
My flesh therewith shall give a quittance;
I will now begin, if God give me grace.

Knowledge: Everyman, God give you time and space:
Thus I bequeath you in the hands of our Savior,
Thus may you make your reckoning sure.

Everyman: In the name of the Holy Trinity,
My body sore punished shall be:
Take this body for the sin of the flesh;
Also though delightest to go gay and fresh;
And in the way of damnation thou did me brine;
Therefore suffer now strokes and punishing.
Now of penance I will wade the water clear,
To save me from purgatory, that sharp fire.

Good-Deeds: I thank God, now I can walk and go;
And am delivered of my sickness and woe.
Therefore with Everyman I will go, and not spare;
His good works I will help him to declare.

Knowledge: Now, Everyman, be merry and glad;
Your Good-Deeds cometh now;
Now is your Good-Deeds whole and sound,
Going upright upon the ground.

Everyman: My heart is light, and shall be evermore;
Now will I smite faster than I did before.

Good-Deeds: Everyman, pilgrim, my special friend,
Blessed by thou without end;
For thee is prepared the eternal glory,
Ye gave me made whole and sound,
Therefore I will bid by thee in every stound. [stound="season"]

Everyman: Welcome, my Good-Deeds; now I hear thy voice,
I weep for very sweetness of love.

Knowledge: Be no more sad, but ever rejoice,
God seeth they living in this throne above;
Put on his garment to thy behove,
Which is wet with your tears,
Or else before god you may it miss,
When you to your journey's end come shall.

Everyman: Gentle Knowledge, what do you it call?

Knowledge: It is a garment of sorrow:
From pain it will you borrow;
Contrition it is,
That getteth forgiveness;
It pleaseth God passing well.

Good-Deeds: Everyman, will you wear it for your heal?

Everyman: Now blessed by Jesu. Mary's Son!
From now have I on true contrition.
And let us go now without tarrying;
Good-Deeds, have we clear our reckoning?

Good-Deeds: Yea, indeed I have it here.

Everyman: Then I trust we need not fear;
Now friends, let us not part in twain.

Knowledge: Nay, Everyman, that will we not, certain.

Good-Deeds: Yet must thou lead with thee
Three persons of great might.

Everyman: Who should they be?

Good-Deeds: Discretion and Strength, they hight,
And thy Beauty may not abide behind.

Knowledge: Also ye must call to mind.
Your Five-wits as for your counsellors.

Good-Deeds: You must have them ready at all hours

Everyman: How shall I get them hinder?

Knowledge: You must call them all together,
And they will hear you incontient.

Everyman: My friends, come hither and be present
Discretion, Strength, my Five-wits and Beauty.

Beauty: Here at you will we be all ready.
What will ye that we should do?

Good-Deeds: That ye would with Everyman go,
And help him in his pilgrimage,
Advise you, will ye with him or not in that voyage?

Strength: We will bring him all thither,
To his help and comfort, ye may believe me.

Discretion: So will we go with him all together.

Everyman: Almighty God, loved thou be,
I give thee laud that I have hither brought
Strength, Discretion, Beauty, and Five-wits; lack I nought;
And my Good-Deeds, with Knowledge clear,
I desire no more to my business.

Strength: And I, Strength, will by you stand in distress,
Though thou would be battle fight on the ground.

Five-Wits: And though it were through the world round,
We will not depart for sweet nor sour.

Beauty: No more will I unto death's hour,
Whatsoever thereof befall.

Discretion: Everyman, advise you first of all;
Go with a good advisement and deliberation;
We all give you virtuous monitiion
That all shall be well.

Everyman: My friends, harken what I will tell:
I pray God reward you in his heavenly sphere.
Now harken, all that be here,
For I will make my testament
Here before you all present.

In alms half good I will give with my hands twain
In the way of charity with good intent,
And the other half still shall remain
In quiet to be returned there it ought to be.

This I do in despite of the fiend of hell
To go quite out if his peril.
Even after and this day.

Knowledge: Everyman, hearken what I say;
Go to priesthood, I you advise,
And receive of him in any wise
The holy sacrament and ointment together;
Then shortly see ye turn again hither;
We will all abide you here.

Five-Wits: Yea, Everyman, hie you that ye ready were,
There is no emperor, king, duke, ne baron,
That of God hath commission,
As hath the least priest in the world being;
He beareth the keys and thereof hath the cure
For man's redemption, it is ever sure;
Which God for our soul's medicine
Gave us out of his heart with great pine;
Here in this transitory life, for thee and me
The blessed sacraments seven there be,
Baptism, confirmation, with priesthood good,
And the sacrament of God's precious flesh and blood,
Marriage, the holy extreme unction, and penance;
Gracious sacraments of high divinity.

Everyman: Fain would I receive that holy body
And meek to my ghostly father I will go.

Five-wits: Everyman, that is the best that ye can do:
God will you to salvation bring,
For priesthood exceedeth all other things;
To us Holy Scripture they do teach.
And converteth man from sin heaven to reach;
God hath to them more power given,
Than to any angel that is in heaven;
With five words he may consecrate
God's body in flesh and blood to male,
And handleth his maker between his hands;
The priest bindeth and unbindeth all bands,
Both in earth and in heaven;
Thou ministers all the sacraments seven;
Though we kissed thy feet thou were worthy;
Thou art surgeon that cureth sin deadly;
No remedy we find under God
But all only priesthood.

Everyman, God gave priests that dignity,
And setteth them in his stead amount us to be;
Thus be they above angels in degree

Knowledge: If priests be good it is so surely;
But when Jesus hanged on the cross with great smart
There he gave, out of his blessed heart,
The same sacrament in great torment:
He sold them not to us, that Lord Omnipotent.
Therefore Saint Peter the apostle doth say
That Jesu's curse hath all they
Which God their Savior do buy or sell,
Or they for any money do take or tell.

Sinful priests giveth the sinners example bad;
Their children sitteth by other men's fires, I have heard;
And some haunteth women's company,
With unclean life, as lusts of lechery:
These be with sin made blind.

Five-wits: I trust to God no such may we find;
Therefore let us priesthood honour,
And follow their doctrine for our souls' succour;
We be their sheep, and they shepherds be
By whom we all be kept in surety.
Peace, for yonder I see Everyman come,
Which hath made true satisfaction.

Good-Deeds: Methinketh it is he indeed.

Everyman: Now Jesu be our alder speed. ["Now Jesus speed in help of all"]
I have received the sacrament for my redemption,
And then mine extreme unction:
Blessed be all they that counsell me to take it!

And now, friends, let us go without longer respite;
I thank God that ye have tarried so long.
Now set each of you on this rod your hand,
And shortly follow me:
I go before, there I would be; God be our guide.

Strength: Everyman, we will not from you go,
Till ye have done this voyage long.

Discretion: I, Discretion, will bide by you also.

Knowledge: And though this pilgrimage be never so strong,
I will never part you fro:
Everyman, I will be as sure by the
As ever I did by Judas Maccabee.

THE FINAL PASSAGE (This scene is the climax)

Everyman: Alas, I am so faint I may not stand,
My limbs under me do fold;
Friends, let us not turn again to this land,
Not for all the world's gold,
For into this cave must I creep
And turn to the earth and there to sleep.

Beauty: What into this grave? Alas!

Everyman: Yea, there shall you consume more and less.

Beauty: And what, should I smother here?

Everyman: Yea, by my faith, and never more appear.
In this world live no more we shall,
But in heaven before the highest Lord of all.

Beauty: I cross out all this; adieu by Saint John;
I take my cap in my lap and am gone.

Everyman: What, Beauty, whither will ye?

Beauty: Peace, I am deaf; I look not behind me,
Not and thou would give me all the gold in thy chest.

Everyman: Alas, whereto may I trust?
Beauty goeth fast away hie;
She promised with me to live and die.

Strength: Everyman, I will thee also forsake and deny;
Thy game liketh me not at all.

Everyman: Why, then ye will forsake me all.
Sweet Strength, tarry a little space.

Strength: Nay, sir, by thy rood of grace
I will hie me from thee fast,
Though thou weep till thy heart brast.

Everyman: Ye would ever bide by me, ye said.

Strength: Yea, I have you far enough conveyed;
Ye be old enough, I understand,
Your pilgrimage to take on hand;
I repent me that I hither came.

Everyman: Strength, you to displease I am to blame;
Will you break promise that is debt?

Strength: In faith, I care not;
Thou art but a fool to complain,
You spend your speech and waste your brain;
Go thrust thee into the ground.

Everyman: I had went surer I should you have found.
He that trustest in his Strength
She him deceiveth at the length.
Both Strength and Beauty forsaketh me,
Yet they promise me fair and lovingly.

Discretion: Everyman, I will after Strength be gone,
As for me I will leave you alone.

Everyman: Why, Discretion, will ye forsake me?

Discretion: Yea, in faith, I will go from thee,
For when Strength goeth before
I follow after evermore.

Everyman: Yet, I pray thee, for the love of the Trinity,
Look in my grave once piteously.

Discretion: Nay, so nigh will I not come.
Farewell, every one!

Everyman: O all thing faileth, save God alone;
Beauty, Strength, and Discretion;
For when Death bloweth his blast,
They all run from me full fast.

Five-wits: Everyman, my leave now of thee I take;
I will follow the other, for here I thee forsake.

Everyman: O Jesu, help, all hath forsaken me!

Good-Deeds: Nay, Everyman, I will bide with thee,
I will not forsake thee indeed;
Thou shalt find me a good friend at need.

Everyman: Gramercy, Good-Deeds; now may I true friends see;
They have forsaken me every one;
I loved them better than my Good-Deeds alone.
Knowledge, will ye forsake me also?

Knowledge: Yea, Everyman, when ye to death do go;
But not yet for no manner of danger.

Everyman: Gramercy, Knowledge, with all me heart.

Knowledge: Nay, yet I will not depart from hence depart,
Till I see where ye shall be come.

Everyman: Methinketh, alas, that I must be gone,
To make my reckoning and my debts pay,
For I see my time is nigh spent away.
Take example, all ye that do hear or see,
How they that I loved best do forsake me,
Except my Good-Deeds that bideth truly.

Good-Deeds: All earthly things is but vanity:
Beauty, Strength, and Discretion, do man forsake,
Foolish friends and kinsmen, that fair spake,
All fleeth save Good-Deeds, and that am I.

Everyman: Have mercy on me, God, most mighty;
And stand by me, thou Mother and Maid, holy Mary.

Good-Deeds: Fear not, I will speak for thee.

Everyman: Here I cry God mercy.

Good-Deeds: Short our end, and minish our pain;
Let us go and never come again.

Everyman: Into thy hands, Lord, my soul I commend;
Receive it, Lord, that it be not lost;
As thou me boughtest, so me defend,
And save me from the fiend's boast,
That I may appear with that blessed host
That shall be saved at the day of doom.
In manus tuas- of might's most [manus tuas, Latin for "your hands"]
For ever- commendo spiritum meum. ["I commend my spirit"]

Knowledge: Now hath he suffered that we all shall endure;
The Good-Deeds shall make all sure.
Now hath he made ending;
Methinketh that I hear angels sing
And make great joy and melody,
Where Everyman's soul received shall be.

Angel: Come, excellent elect spouse to Jesu:
Hereabove thou shalt go
Because of thy singular virtue:
Now the soul is taken the body fro;
Thy reckoning is crystal-clear.
Now shalt thou into the heavenly sphere,
Unto the which all ye shall come
That liveth well before the day of doom.

Doctor: This moral men may have in mind;
Ye hearers, take it of worth, old and young,
And forsake pride, for he deceiveth you in the end,
And remember Beauty, Five-wits, Strength, and Discretion,
They all at last do Everyman forsake,
Save his Good-Deeds, there doth he take.
But beware, and they be small
Before God, he hath no help at all.

None excuse may be there for Everyman:
Alas, how shall he do then?
For after death amends may no man make,
For then mercy and pity do him forsake.

If his reckoning be not clear when he do come,
God will say- ite maledicti in ignem aeternum. ["go, sinner to the eternal flames"]
And he that hath his account whole and sound,
High in heaven he shall be crowned;
Unto which place God bring us all thither
That we may live body and soul together.

Thereto help the Trinity,
Amen, say ye, for saint Charity.

THUS ENDETH THIS MORALL PLAY OF EVERYMAN.

Themes

Live for Tomorrow

.......Live for tomorrow—that is, life after death—by leading a holy and virtuous earthly life that includes doing good works. In the opening lines of the play, Death states this theme when he says, "Man, in the beginning, / Look well, and take good heed to the ending." Everyman learns to "take good heed" before it is too late. He confesses and repents his sins and thus earns paradise on the strength of his contrition and the good works that he has performed .

The Deceptive Appearance of Sin

.......Man in his youth perceives sin as beautiful, like a spring flower, as Death says in the opening lines:

Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet,
Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep,
When the body lieth in clay.

But this flower fades and dies in the autumn and winter of life. Death warns the audience to take heed of this truth.

Material vs Spiritual Gain

.......A man may gain a world of riches, but they are as nothing if he suffers the loss of his soul. God enunciates this theme near the beginning of the play:

I perceive here in my majesty,
How that all the creatures be to me unkind,
Living without dread in worldly prosperity:
Of ghostly sight the people be so blind,
Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;
In worldly riches is all their mind. . . .

Everyman discovers the truth of the adage You can’t take it with you. “It,” of course, is his store of material goods, a burden that encumbers his spirituality. Good Deeds tells him that he should have lightened this burden by giving possessions to the poor.

God's Mercy

.......Humans snub God’s mercy. Caught up with the pleasures of life and the pursuit of material possessions, people neglect to petition the Lord to receive forgiveness for their sins, which He is every ready to bestow. God calls attention to this human fault near the beginning of the play:

I proferred the people great multitude of mercy,
And few there be that asketh it heartily.
They be so encumbered with worldly riches.

Final Judgment

.......No human being can escape final judgment. God tells Death that the day will come when every person must undertake a final journey and give an accounting of his life before the Lord. No man can escape this task; every person will face a day of reckoning. .

Major Themes
Transitoriness

Life is transitory, and the very opening of the play announces that it will show us "how transitory we be all day" in our lives. The play documents Everyman's journey from sinful life to sin-free, holy death - and its key theme is how we can't take things with us beyond the grave. Life is transitory - always changing, always in transition, always moving towards death. Only heaven or hell is eternal.
Sin

One way of looking at the play and Everyman's forsaking friends is by grouping them according to the seven deadly sins. It's certainly true that each sin could be found in the play, but sin itself is a wider theme in the play: Everyman has to absolve himself of sin to go to heaven.
Death

That the play is about death is foregrounded when, early in the play, a personified Death appears at God's summons. Death's role is to bring people to judgment. Though the play doesn't particularly explore our emotional response to Death, it is important to note that Everyman's pilgrimage is to the grave - and that the whole play is a consideration of what man must do before death.
Pilgrimage

A pilgrimage is a journey taken to a sacred or religious place, and it has often been noted that Everyman's journey through the play is in some sense itself a pilgrimage: a religious journey taken, ultimately, to heaven. Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrimage: a transitory journey to an ultimately spiritual goal. Comparisons might also be made with those in holy orders, who, like Everyman, must learn to live without belongings and let go of the things they are attached to in order to progress on a spiritual journey.
Worldly Goods

Everyman is - notably - deserted by his Goods about halfway through the play, and told that love of Goods is opposite to love of God. For Everyman, who is finely dressed, and whose friend, Fellowship, holds a new robe in high esteem, part of the progression of the play is learning not to be attached to worldly goods, and to focus his attention instead on things with spiritual value.
Reckoning and judgement

Everyman has to clear his book of reckoning before he can progress to heaven, and one of the things the play considers is how humans will be judged after they have died. God is furious that humans are living a superficial life on earth, focusing on wealth and riches, without worrying about the greater judgment that is to come - and, notably, Everyman's own judgment - his ability to understand his life - becomes gradually more and more enlightened on his pilgrimage towards his heavenly reward.
Earthly versus spiritual

At the beginning of the play, God is furious that humans are concerning themselves with worldly things and not with their ultimate spiritual judgment - and whether they will dwell in heaven or hell. People are "living without dread in worldly prosperity". The play constantly explores the conflict between worldly concerns, riches, clothes and relationships, and the need to focus on spiritual welfare, heaven and hell and God's judgment.
Glossary of Terms
allegory

a form of metaphor in which abstract ideas or principles are represented as concrete - as characters, figures, or events. In Everyman, for example, abstract ideas like good deeds and strength are represented as people named Good Deeds and Strength.
alms

good deeds
baleys

whip
book of count

literally is a "book of account": the same as a book of reckoning
book of reckoning

see "reckoning": the "book of reckoning" is the book in which, in Christian doctrine, all a person's sins and good deeds are recorded
cousin

in medieval English, not the same as the modern version: it is a more general term meaning "member of the same family"
dread

(medieval English) fear
fain

(medieval English) glad
fellowship

friendship, company
forsake

desert, leave behind, run away from
Job

a character in the Old Testament who maintained his faith in God even when tested with severe hardship and misfortune


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