The fourth Discworld novel begins the Death arc, a series of five books centered around the classically hooded figure and his family. Death – who has appeared in each of the previous books so far – is exactly what you would expect: a dazzling, blue-eyed skeleton wielding an hourglass and scythe. The hourglasses, affectionately called Lifetimers, measure the lifespans of all living beings on the Disc, and alert Death who to visit during the Duty. He rides his biblically pale horse Binky across the Disc reaping the souls of the dearly departed. Although He’s not required to attend each death, He appears on special occasions including the deaths of witches and wizards.
Death, as we all know, is the bookmark at the end of life – no one escapes Him (unless you exist in a temporal black hole as an employee of Death Himself, but we’ll come back to this later).
It’s no wonder that Pratchett chose Death as a subject; before his death in 2015, Pratchett was not only a vocal supporter of euthanasia, but a willing participant. Three years after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2008, he began making arrangements for an assisted death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. He told the Atlantic:
“When I am no longer able to write my books, I am not sure that I will want to go on living. I want to enjoy life for as long as I can squeeze the juice out of it — and then, I’d like to die. But I don’t quite know how, and I’m not quite sure when.”
There is undoubtedly comfort in a good death (which is also the name of a nonprofit you can support here) In The Art of Discworld, Pratchett relates:
“Sometimes I get nice letters from people who know they’re due to meet him (Death) soon, and hope I’ve got him right. Those are the kind of letters that cause me to stare at the wall for some time.”
So, pun intended, undertaking writing about Death was no small feat for Pratchett.
The book begins with Death hiring Mort as an apprentice – the coincidence is noted – and introducing him to Ysabell, Death’s adopted human daughter. Together they reside in an extra-dimensional realm called Death’s Domain.
Existing in an extra-dimensional space allows Death to continuously break the fourth wall. For starters, He speaks in small caps with no parenthesis, a grammatical choice other characters can apparently hear. Mort adopts this voice as he slowly takes over the position of Death but retains the ability to turn it off at will.
But perhaps the most significant instance of fourth wall breaking is the in-story acknowledgement of plot structure from the denizens of Death’s Domain. Death hired Mort as an apprentice because He had grown weary of the Duty, and He knows apprentices marry their master’s daughters and take over the business – He wanted a son-in-law. Ysabell constantly references fairytales and saves Mort with true love’s kiss. Near the end of the story, Mort has an entire conversation with his inner self for the joke of self-awareness, his inner self does not make a sequel appearance. Constant exposition through footnotes in addition to these instances keep the reader aware of the story and support Death existing outside of known reality.
Outside of character, Pratchett explicitly writes “once upon time” (86) and later that “Mort had changed a lot in the last few chapters” (115). He goes even further than this to not only paint a picture of the scene at hand, but to literally direct it as if it were a script.
“THERE IS? said Death.
(That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn’t it? It’s probably called a fast dissolve or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where a senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything).”
And a just-for-fun mention: “THAT’S THE NICEST THING – The door slammed on the rest of the sentence.”
Through constant reminder that the plot is a device of the novel in its purest form, Pratchett makes certain the reader knows Death is bound to tell the story but not participate.
This idea, in turn, creates the conflict at the center of Mort. Death has grown attached to humanity and fatigued of his job. When Death needs a break, Mort takes over the Duty and returns to the Disc to reap the souls of the departed – all except for the Princess Keli of Sto Lat who he decides to spare. This, as you can imagine, has terrible consequences.
The event horizon, for example, starts to engulf all existence and separate people’s minds from their bodies in an attempt to right reality, in fact, Princess Keli’s people stop recognizing her entirely since the universe has already decided her dead, and she has to employ the wizard Cutwell to remind citizens that she exists:
“In the city of Sto Lat, Princess Keli still ruled, with a certain amount of difficulty and with the full-time aid of the Royal Recogniser… In the lands outside, though… the traditional reality still held sway and she was quite definitely dead, the duke was king and the world was proceeding sedately according to plan, whatever that was.”
Pratchett using event horizons as a plot device is not surprising considering how much science and theory he employs in Discworld. We’ve seen the science behind how light and mass moves through the Disc, and how the Disc moves through space, but a new personal favorite is how Pratchett blends science with religion. The best example of this is through the first mention of Cori Celsti – a ten mile high spire of cold fire where the (900 known) gods live surrounded by mountains where the Listeners live. The Listeners are the oldest religious sect on the Disc who are trying to hear what exactly the Creator said when He created the universe; the gods are divided on whether this is an actual religion. If this is sounding familiar, it’s because Pratchett wrote the Cosmic Microwave Background (the CMBR) into his novels. He writes:
“Clearly, nothing the Creator makes could ever be destroyed, which means the echoes of those first syllables must still be around somewhere, bouncing and rebounding off all matter in the cosmos but still audible to a really good listener.”
This is no different than what our current Roundworld astrophysicists are doing to examine the origins of our universe, and possibly see the Big Bang itself. The CMBR allows us to see redshift and some of the oldest stars in the known universe, the origins of life, the universe, and everything (this reference hopefully landed). Through his time performing the Duty, Mort also learns the importance of humans having something to believe in, and weirdly, we learn about a wizard predestination. Though wizard predestination may not be considered religious, it is considered funny.
Wizards popped up a significant amount in Mort – we actually learned about the origins of the Unseen University and had some world building for the next Discworld novel. Pratchett explains that wizards are celibate (though we won’t learn why until the next book), when Mort talks to his inner self he says:
“Wizards aren’t supposed to – to go out with girls. They’re celebrate…
Celebrate?
They’re not supposed to youknow…
What, never any youknow at all? said the internal voice, and it sounded as if it was grinning.
It’s supposed to be bad for the magic, thought Mort bitterly.
Funny place to keep magic.”
Procreation isn’t the only way wizards get into trouble with Death. Death’s elderly manservant, Albert, is revealed to be Alberto Malich, the founder of the UU who feared the monsters waiting for him in the afterlife (wizard predestination strikes again) and performed a reversed version of the Rite of AshkEnte in the hope of keeping Death away from him. The spell backfired and sent him to Death’s side, where he remained in order to put off his demise. Wizards perform the Rite once more at the end of Mort which summons Death as well as the part of Death that had taken over Mort, and this “cures” him of the Duty.
Mort challenges Death to a duel for the souls of Cutwell and the Princess, and though he loses, Death allows them all to live and asks the gods for an altered reality where everyone can live happily ever after. The time Death spent on the Disc hanging out with cats and drinking Scumble until He got not drunk gave Him a soft spot for humanity – ironically humanity is what made Mort a terrifying Reaper. He gives Mort and Ysabell the original reality in a pearl for their wedding gift, and Princess Keli grants them the titles of Duke and Duchess of Sto Helit.
In translations of Mort to languages with gendered nouns, Death’s gender changes. For example, despite the feminine noun “la morte” indicating Death should be a woman, the French translator, Patrick Couton, justified the fact that Death is a man by a pun in a footnote: “La Mort est un mâle, car c’est un mal nécessaire” (Death is male because death itself is a necessary evil.) There are dozens of extra jokes and footnotes unique to the languages the novel is translated in, and hundreds of references for multilingual fans to catch.
There are plenty of other references sprinkled throughout the story as well. We visit the Unseen University and see Granny Weatherwax, the Librarian, and Rincewind once again. Happy to report that Rincewind re-enrolled in the University now that the Octavo spell has left his head. There are a couple of references to Gandalf because, “That’s the sort of thing you wizard fellows are supposed to be good at,” and he references a Pygmy, a reference to his first novel The Carpet People published in 1971. Pratchett is referenced in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, a work also known for its sympathetic portrayal of Death. Here are the lines side by side:
“WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.”
― Death in Mort, 1987
“When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream County, 1991
The pair wrote Good Omens together in 1990, and this isn’t the first nod to each other’s works we see from either of them.
Though it’s not a reference, Mort has an undeniable link to Esk in Equal Rites. They both came from almost nothing, and through literal literacy, were able to transform their lives and go on grand world shaping adventures. Rincewind, too, was shaped by reading a book that in turn shaped the Disc. As an advocate for literacy through scholarships at the University of South Australia and through personal philanthropy aimed at children, the theme of magical literacy develops into a beautiful arc across his early Discworld novels.
This was by far the most cohesive and well written Discworld book of the series (chronologically). It seems that Pratchett grabbed hold of plot structure and rode it bareback through the Disc’s sky like the god Helios himself – though Helios is not one of the 900 confirmed gods in Cori Celesti. We won’t revisit Death as a protagonist for quite some time, but His appearances in future novels will be filled with new insight and meaning contextualizing the growing Discworld cast into a wonderful ensemble.
After all, THERE IS NO JUSTICE, there is just Death.
Wendy Fernandez 