One Day I Won’t Exist and That is Upsetting, A Year on Discworld: Book 11 — Reaper Man
In a quest to escape the reality of 2020 and recapture my youth, I’ve set myself the goal of reading all 41 Discworld novels in one year. Join me on this voyage of discovery which definitely isn’t a complete waste of time. Mild spoilers, probably.
Like last week’s entry Eric, I had previously read Reaper Man but forgot or attributed a large chunk of its plot to a different book, in this case, the entire secondary story-arc. The primary story is Death, because of the various infractions he has made in his duties, is retired. Suddenly, Death has a timer life the rest of the universe indicating his existence is now finite. He moves to a farm on the Disc and decides to live out the rest of his day in on a farm/extended metaphor.
The secondary plot has life-force, normally escorted from reality by death, building up in the space between existence and non-existence and flooding back into the world. This results in bizarre manifestations and 130 -year-old wizard Windle Poons not being dead when he should. Instead, he joins the ranks of the undead.
“I blame this almost entirely on its wonderful cover and the fact I read it in my teens — half my life ago.”
The fact I’d forgotten the Poons’ story arch (or rather misplaced it, for some reason I thought it occurred in The Monstrous Regiment) wasn’t a shock. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise. What was a shock is how I’d imagined Reaper Man being in my memory and how it made me feel re-reading it. I’d associated it with late summer evenings in the heat. I had a pleasant and warm memory of it as relaxing and soothing. I blame this almost entirely on its wonderful cover and the fact I read it in my teens — half my life ago.
Now, in my 30s, amid a global pandemic, I read it as quite an emotional rumination on dying. Whether it’s the panic of the time we’re living in or the cognitive dissonance between a memory with my entire life before me and the reality of much less life before me, more than once I was occasionally sucker-punched by the existential thought of my death. Or rather, my eventual non-existence, how and why I might die didn’t bother me so much like what would happen next — nothing.
“How can we bear knowing our life is ebbing away?”
Death, as Bill Door, attends to the summer harvest, reaping one stalk at a time. As he does he considers how humans must think about death. He becomes immensely irritated at tick-tocking clocks and the road of sand pouring through his timer. He is aware time is now a resource he is continually losing and asks how human can bear that thought.
Something about that deeply affected me. How can we bear knowing our life is ebbing away? I suppose the answer is we try to find something valuable to do with that time. But in situations like, let’s say, mass isolation that idea becomes a little fragmented.
While we’re isolated, it’s hard to be productive and downright unfair to put that pressure on yourself. Not every day will be a new lesson learned or a self-improvement made. In fact, they’ll often be downright boring and discarded. There is a paradox here. In letting the days slip past, if you wanted to maudlin, which let’s face it, I am, we’re slowing indulging that unbearable concept that we’re getting closer to death, but we do so, to starve off the possibility of death at the same time. Living life to its fullest may be more desirable but right now it could potentially be a much shorter-lived desire.
SPOILERS NEXT!
Just a little warning there for anyone who hasn’t read Reaper Man yet. I think this paradox of letting life slip through your finger to at least have some hold on it has a solution of sorts. In the book, Bill Door and his employer and landlady Miss Flitworth both hand over part of the time they have left in their lives so that someone can live just a little longer. Right now, it isolation doesn’t feel like our own lives slipping away but a minor dedication those who need more time to get through this.
Existential thoughts about your non-existence seem less important against the idea of some else non-existences. As oddly morose as Reaper Man made me in its analysis of death, it leads me to the rather nice notion that decent people value the lives of everyone, even when they worry about themselves.
“But as you get older, logic seems cold and distance.”
I would completely recommend Reaper Man and of the Discworld series I’ve explored so far, it’s certainly reaped the weightiest thoughts. Maybe that value comes from being a little older and in more dire straits than I was when I first read it. I was more moody and nihilistic back then, at least on the surface, but that was just the grasping of a teenager onto some structure of thought with logical answers. But as you get older, logic seems cold and distance. It might help you exist but it doesn’t really have anything to do with being human.
Anyway… went off a tangent there. Sorry for bringing everyone down.
I’m not sure when the next update will be. For one I’ve depressed myself but much more importantly I’ve run out of Discworld books and I’m waiting for some more to arrive but that pesky virus is putting a hold on everything. See you when I see you.
