Everybody

Death, “played by the oldest actor in the company” (4) and not part of the actor lottery, projects a sense of experience and world-weariness. Specifying the actor’s age implies that Death should seem to have more experience and knowledge than anyone else in the play, but when God orders Death to bring Everybody, Death isn’t sure what to do. They select Everybody and the other four Somebodies from the audience, appearing to choose at random. The play’s mortals often question Death about God, death, and the nature of life, but Death always gives vague, noncommittal replies that make it unclear whether Death knows the answer. However, Death is constant and universal.

The protagonist of the play, Everybody, is chosen by lottery, suggesting that death chooses randomly rather than by design. Unlike a traditional protagonist, Everybody has little agency in their journey throughout the play. There is no stopping or derailing the journey into death, and the end of the story is inevitable. Everybody isn’t heroic or special, and they don’t face their fate with bravery or acceptance. They respond with anger and irrationality, absorbed in their own perspective of the universe and frustrated to discover that their friends, family, and belongings respond to their death by focusing on themselves instead of supporting Everybody.

Everybody loses almost everything in the process of dying. They go to their grave accompanied by Love and burdened by the Evil they put into the world. Unlike Everyman in the original medieval play, Everybody is not redeemed. Everybody is relatable because they are average and imperfect, providing a cautionary tale to audience members as to what really matters in life.

The characters played by the Somebodies are different for each performance, shifting and unstable by design. These characters represent Everybody’s connections on earth. When Everybody wants companionship in death, they ask their friends, family, and belongings. Everybody soon finds that these relationships are superficial: The Somebodies swear that they’ll do anything for Everybody, but refuse to accompany Everybody into death and instead make Everybody’s death about themselves. Friendship uses Everybody’s death to make art that paints Friendship as the victim, Kinship kidnaps a small child to avoid answering Everybody’s pleas, Cousin turns Everybody’s death into proselytizing to ease their fears about their own death, and Stuff informs Everybody that it doesn’t really belong to Everybody because it will remain when Everybody’s existence ends. Everybody can’t take people or stuff with them into death, and they have nothing to show for the effort they put into acquiring them while alive.

In short interludes, Everybody converses in the dark with disembodied voices, seeking understanding about what is happening from voices that represent the multitudes of which Everybody is a representative member. The voices are a chorus that speaks Everybody’s thoughts, expressing desperate hope and furious self-hatred. As Everybody works through their journey, the voices become distracted with petty arguments. To disambiguate symbolism that seems cryptic or confusing, before all the voices abandon Everybody, one of them points out: “You’re dying. And you’re dying alone” (41).

Although the text refers to these characters, also played by Somebodies, as virtues, a word that refers to qualities of moral value, these virtues aren’t earned through steadfast morality. They are received randomly through accidents of birth and genetics. While they provide great advantages or disadvantages in privilege for the living, they disappear in death and leave every person equal. These virtues are eager to go with Everybody into death. Before death, Everybody’s body fails—youthful power cannot follow Everybody into the grave.

Throughout the first part of the play, Love waits for Everybody to acknowledge them. The play doesn’t define what Love means within the context of Everybody’s life. In the original play, the equivalent character was Good Deeds, the only thing that could follow Everyman into his grave. With no time to do good deeds in the world, Everyman could still evoke Good Deeds by confessing and repenting. Here, Love also demands that Everybody humble themself by renouncing the need for control and confessing that the body is only meat.

Evil is more personal to Everybody, representing individual malice and wrongdoing. Evil’s sudden appearance complicates the morality of the play: Everybody cannot simply repent. They are bolstered by love, but burdened by their evil deeds, which insist on staying with Everybody regardless of their wishes.