Everybody

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Scene Summaries & Analyses

Scenes 1-7

Scenes 8-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Life and Death

At the end of the play, the Usher asks, “Why is it these plays about death only ever wind up trying to tell us about life? I guess it’s because no one’s ever really figured out what happens when we die, huh?” (54). The play is about the mysteries of life and death, but more pointedly, it’s about humanity’s anxieties about the inability to know the mysteries of life and death. As Everybody journeys into death, they receive little clarity, losing their senses and the focus of their mind, leaving them more confused than they were at the start. Understanding, who guides Everybody’s faculties, has no grasp of the larger picture of life and death until they watch Everybody experience it.

The play asks: What is the purpose of life? In the original medieval morality play Everyman, the universe is far simpler and defined by religious thought. God and heaven exist, and Everyman can reach them by following the clear path set out by Catholic doctrine. The purpose of life is to do Good Deeds because nothing else stays with you when you die. By contrast, Everybody has more questions than answers, despite the fact that Jacobs-Jenkins has characters sarcastically point out message of different moments in the play. No one can reveal or claim knowledge of the unknowable, and this is why Everybody struggles to give their life meaning and feel like their death is not mundane—especially when they discover that most of what they valued in life doesn’t matter.

When the Somebodies in their different incarnations meet Death or learn about Everybody’s situation, they always ask the same panicked questions about the existence of God and what happens after death. The play is firm that the workings of the universe are either random or inscrutable, and perhaps it doesn’t matter which. Ultimately, no one is prepared to meet death; individual life is fleeting though it feels very significant to the one living it. God may or may not be real or may or may not resemble the ideas of God that humans have created, but death is certain. Unlike the medieval original, the play doesn’t specify whether Everybody goes on to an afterlife, or whether their Love or Evil was used to judge them. It suggests that the simplest approach is to focus on creating more Love and constantly working on Understanding.

The Nature of Humanity

Everybody’s journey happens because God wants to understand the nature of humanity. God wants to know why humans wreak evil and destruction on each other and the rest of creation. However, since God never reappears after the beginning of the play, the audience doesn’t learn what God concludes or how He will alter his creation. The play certainly leads the audience to draw their own conclusions about the flaws of human nature. The play tries to appeal to the audience’s better nature. As God thunders, “DON’T YOU HEAR THE REMAINDER OF MY CREATION, THE WONDER THAT IS EVERYTHING, CRYING OUT FOR JUSTICE AGAINST YOU?” (13).

The play creates a dichotomy between the eternal and the human. Eternal beings, such as God, Death, the Usher, and Love, are static, played by the same actors for each performance. As an eternal being, God does not comprehend what it means to be temporary. However, humans are interchangeable, and their lives are random, which is dramatized through each performance’s actor lottery. As Everybody comes closer to death, they must face the meaninglessness of the values they prioritized in life. First, Everybody confronts the tangible manifestations of their efforts and labor in the world: the family they’ve participated in growing, the friendships they’ve cultivated, and the belongings that they’ve earned by working. Humans use these achievements to measure whether a life is successful, but none of them can follow Everybody into death. Unguided, humanity scrambles chaotically in the face of limited time.

The eternal beings in the play are not necessarily sager than the humans. They simply don’t understand the fear of death and the unknown. When their time runs out, Everybody responds with existential fury and desperation, suggesting that the destructive nature of humanity comes from a lack of understanding. As Understanding questions, “What would be so wrong with just… knowing a few more details beforehand? […] Wouldn’t that make me a better person?” Death responds, “I don’t know. Would it?” (52)

Wisdom and Morality

Everybody raises questions about the nature and purpose of morality and what constitutes the wisdom to determine its parameters. When explaining the original 15th century play, the Usher jokes, “[I]t’s safe to say we’re dealing with some fairly old and ancient material, so maybe let’s trust it to be really wise and meaningful, okay?” (9). This statement is ironic: The moral and ethical structure of Western society is founded on the same ancient religious texts Everyman prizes, and the result has been, as the play suggests, less than ideal. Additionally, Everyman teaches audiences a strict, unambiguous Catholic version of morality; in contrast, Jacobs-Jenkins promotes a more humanist vision of right and wrong.

The play universalizes morality in a way that transcends culture and religion. Stripping Everybody bare (literally and figuratively) offers a critique of our culture’s reining values. Most humans spend their lives cultivating and collecting family, friends, and belongings. These repositories of human love are not true Love, the play argues: Love is ready to walk out of the play because Everybody has ignored them by focusing on these external signifiers. By replacing the original play’s character Good Deeds with Love, the play suggests that true Love is more elevated, pure, and selfless than the love within earthly relationships. Good Deeds requires charitable acts and professions of religious faith, but Love requires sincerity and forces Everybody to humble themself.

When Everybody goes to the grave at the end of the journey, they lose what they play terms their “four virtues” (47): Strength, Beauty, Mind, and Senses. The word “virtue” typically refers to moral qualities, while these “virtues” are qualities of the body: These external markers of power might be how humans are valued in life, but they are also random accidents of genetics. In death, Everybody does not need wits or strength. They travel their final steps with nothing but Love and Evil, which are both ambiguous and subjective concepts. The original play did not send Everyman to his grave with Evil in tow. Once he confesses and repents, he is no longer accountable for his evil deeds, but Branden Jacobs-Jenkins restores accountability. The moral of the play, as explained by the Usher, is that humans don’t know what happens after death, but they can see the ramifications of evil in life. Instead of worrying about questions with no answers, everyone should cultivate love and do what they can to minimize the evil and damage they do to each other, the world, and the planet.