Everybody

“Now the original play, Everyman, purported to be about Life and its transience, which is to say it was really, I guess, about Death.”

During Everyman’s journey into death, he learns what is significant in life. In the end, the sins he committed don’t matter because he confesses, repents, and goes to heaven. Everybody doesn’t make that guarantee. Instead, the play suggests that audiences ought to remember that life is short, and no one can return to fix their mistakes, so we should try to love as much as possible and hurt as little as possible to maximize the time we have.

“Or, if that weirds you out, there’s also this Buddhist-ness at the heart of the material, which is just saying, like, ‘Hey, everybody, you know flowers? Like how they bloom in the spring and they’re so pretty when you’re looking at them and smelling them or whatever but, by winter, they’re dead and gone and you literally cannot recall anything specific about the specific flowers you just spent your whole spring smelling and looking at except for this vague memory of having smelled and looked at some flowers once, in general, maybe?”

The message and themes of the original play are decidedly Catholic. As the Usher universalizes the central idea into a message about morality that fits into religious and secular ideologies.

“INSTEAD OF LAUGHTER, HOW ABOUT A THANK YOU FOR THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER? OR THE GIFT OF PLEASURE ITSELF? OR OF BEING ITSELF—AN EXPERIENCE TO YOU WHICH I HAVE MERELY LOANED!”

The Usher’s body channels God, who doesn’t have a corporeal form. God sees life as a gift for which humans ought to be grateful; God cannot comprehend that fear of death and the unknown drives people’s decisions.

“BECAUSE THE THING I CHOSE TO BE OF GREATEST ASSISTANCE HAS REVEALED ITSELF TO BE, PERHAPS, THE GREATEST CURSE.”

God had a specific vision for humanity, making humans in God’s image with the assumption that they would view the world as God does. Now, God doesn’t understand why humans breed so much evil and destruction. The major difference between God and humans is mortality. The anticipation of death as an unknowable, unpredictable mystery makes humans desperate and confused about their purpose in the world.

“AND DON’T YOU HEAR THE REMAINDER OF MY CREATION, THE WONDER THAT IS EVERYTHING, CRYING OUT FOR JUSTICE AGAINST YOU?”

Throughout history, people have fought and committed atrocities to grab control. The earth and its inhabitants live in danger of annihilation. Non-humans don’t understand the cruelty and destructiveness of humans and are begging for something to be done about it. 

“‘Figure it out.’ What does it mean when ‘God’ just leaves you to ‘just figure it out’? Oh, man. I’m not a mind-reader! I’m just Death! It’s like sometimes ‘God’ can forget that not everything knows Everything!” (Scene 2, Page 14)

When God leaves Death to arrange Everybody’s journey, Death expresses the major questions of both this play and the original: What does God want? What are humans supposed to do and how do they figure it out?

“Now, see: I’m never really sure how to answer that. I mean, doesn’t that sort of depend on your definition of ‘real’? Like I don’t know what’s ‘real’ to you? What you see? What you feel? And why isn’t it ever enough that I’m real?”

Although Death often gets these questions, they have no satisfactory answer. For some people, God is extremely real and for others, not at all. Humans can be certain that death is real and will happen eventually, which should shape the choices made in life.

“So, you may or may not already know this from marketing materials but, in this play, it is specified that the actors’ roles from this point forward be decided by lottery every night. This is done in an attempt to more closely thematize the randomness of death while also destabilizing your preconceive notions about identity, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.”

The Usher breaks the fourth wall to remind the audience that they are sitting in a theatre. The Usher explains the meaning behind the lottery system, dismissing the symbolism as overblown jargon. The playwright uses this tactic frequently in the text, giving the audience the tools they need to consider the larger and more complex questions that the play raises while laughing at our inability to ponder deeply without resorting to academese.

“You had to live! …Right? Wait—did you have to live? Why did you have to live again? […] OH NO DID LIFE NOT HAVE A POINT?”

Everybody’s choices were based on the wants and needs of their body and human desires. Once they learn that none of what preoccupied them on earth matters, they berate themself and wonder how much of what they felt obligated to do in life was pointless. This echoes the original play, in which nothing Everyman did in life matters except confession and repentance.

“Do you remember that time we all did that thing together that one time? Do you ever look back on that moment like, ‘Wow. That was the most important, most formative experience of my life and, at the time, I had literally no idea how much the rest of it was just going to suck in comparison’? I do. I think about that all the time.”

In a long, rambling monologue, Friendship spouts generalized affirmations of their relationship with Everybody. However, as generic as their words are, they also show that the friendship felt significant: They had major, important life experiences together. In the end, friends are wrapped up in their own experiences; they place their own needs and interests above each other.

“Why did you do that? Because Friendship—what? Gave off the impression that you weren’t alone in a cold, heartless universe? That life might have meaning? But you are alone, genius. Every human is an isolated thing trapped inside its isolated Self waiting to die.”

Everybody berates themself for losing their temper when Friendship refuses to accompany them into death. Everybody is quick to anger, absorbed by the profundity of their own death and enraged that the people who will survive them can’t see their death as a central, world-changing event. Everybody realizes that they are fundamentally alone because all humans are alone in their bodies. The human sense of self creates an impenetrable world within their thoughts and cannot truly merge with another person.

“No. You’re not some sort of isolated phenomenon. The very basis of your Self is just a genetic mishmash of other Selves. You are a part of something. Think of the long line of accidents and miracles and struggles and victories that it took to bring you into life. When you hold all that in your head, doesn’t it almost feel like… like… sacred or holy or—that the fact of your being alive proves a connection between you and the very beginning of everything, to ‘God’?” 

Everybody is desperate to feel that their existence matters. Since Friendship wasn’t enough, Everybody convinces themself that blood and family create a deeper level of interconnectedness.

“I wonder if it will help if I think and talk about ‘God’ more? Then my presentation would just be like, ‘Well honestly, I spent a lot of my time talking about you, man!’ Do you think that’s what ‘God’ wants? But then that’s like super-weird, because it’s like: Then why was I given the option of not doing that?”

When Everybody tells Cousin that they’re dying, Cousin immediately becomes preoccupied with their own mortality. Cousin’s questions highlight the flaws of using religion as a guide for one’s life choices. How is one supposed to know exactly what to do? And if there’s a specific way that humans are supposed to live, why are they given the free will to do otherwise?

“I’m super scared and over the years you have been such a comfort to me and all the pieces of you are basically all the pieces of my life here and, at the very least, due to Capitalism, my labor has been literally translated into the abstract value with which I purchased you, so in some ways you are actually the sum total of how I spent a lot of my time on this planet.”

Everybody turns for support to the things that preoccupied most of their time on earth. By being part of a Capitalism system, Everybody has accumulated what they think of as belongings. Stuff argues that ownership is not permanent: Stuff will stay behind to be used by the next temporary beings.

“Baby. Yes, I would. And it already sort of sounds like obsessing over me and chasing me down and having more of me might be what’s distracted you from focusing on this presentation or whatever in the first place.”

Stuff acts as an emotionally unavailable partner, using the people who have fallen in love with it. Stuff pushes Everybody to recognize that they allowed Stuff to distract them from pursuing a more fulfilling life that would make for a more impressive presentation to God at the end.

“Let ‘em go. They’re right. I don’t have time for this. I’ve already spent my entire life dealing with this crap. I refuse to spend the last moments of it pushing the same rock up the same hill. Just because you’re uncomfortable with the world doesn’t mean you get to project that onto other people. My insides don’t have to look like your insides in order to be valid. I am a different Self from your Self. How is it so hard to understand that I am not your Self?”

Everybody argues with one of the disembodied voices about race and the way their lived experience makes their perspective unique. Everybody is particularly angry at having to explain the same thing over and over—that their life experience is just as meaningful as the life experience of others; this reminds Everybody of the futility of using the last bit of their life to prove that they are a unique and worthy Self that matters after they’re gone.

“This is theatre.”

When Everybody asks Love, “Can you tell me: is this is real or is this a dream?”, Love replies, “This is theatre.” (42) The play uses the theatre as a liminal space between real and imaginary. Death is real, the questions explored are real, the audience is acknowledged, and the play even mentions the name of the theatre. The performance is also theatrical and illusory. 

“You actually found someone? Weird.”

Death doesn’t expect that anyone will agree to go with Everybody: Everybody’s mortal connections are all too preoccupied with their own mortality to be willing to sacrifice themselves. Love is a different kind of being, immortal and unafraid to go into death.

“I have here Strength, Mind, Beauty, and Five Senses—and Love and Understanding: I don’t know what better companions I could ask for…” 

When people and things fail Everybody, Everybody briefly decides to rely on themself: They have always been able to trust their own body. Everybody doesn’t realize that the body also fails, and that the qualities that they value in themself are attached to their body and brain.

“Beauty has a tendency to fade.”

Although Understanding tries to stop the virtues from leaving Everybody, Beauty runs away first. In the process of aging and the degeneration of the body in death, youthful beauty tends to fade quickly.

“I can’t. I’m too sensitive. Scary Things make me black out. Farewell, Everybody. It was nice being relatively intelligent with you.”

Before Mind runs away, Everybody begs them to look into the grave. Without Strength, Mind is consumed with fear. The four virtues are interconnected, and when one goes, the others disappear as well. Mind is purely intellectual with no faculties for bravery and action, and the secrets of death are too much for Mind to handle alone.

“Love. My one true friend. The others have deserted me, every one; I loved them better than my Love alone.”

Everybody expresses bitter gratitude for Love’s loyalty, admitting that they loved the trappings of their life—their friends, family, belongings, and the faculties of their body—more. They would much rather stay on earth than move on into death with Love by their side.

“I also just wish that this wasn’t such a huge secret. You know? What would be so wrong with just… knowing a few more details beforehand? Wouldn’t that make me a better person?”

After watching Everybody’s experience in the grave, Understanding wonders if knowing what happens after death would make people better humans. Death replies, “I don’t know. Would it?” (52). This theme recurs throughout the play: Humans want to know the answers to live better lives. Death’s response illustrates that this is wishful thinking. Many humans throughout history have felt certain that they knew the answers, but they still committed atrocities and spread destruction.