Everyman

Philip Roth, Everyman

Everyman is American writer Philip Roth’s 2007 and latest work, the title of which borrowed from a well-known medieval morality play that stages the pilgrimage of a Christian soul through life to death. Roth casts away its strong religion influence and reinterprets the inevitable issue of life and death through a contemporary, everyday individual. The omniscient point of view reveals the later life of a common old man, who, after several unsuccessful marriages, finds himself facing with the deterioration in bodily health as he gets older. With much reminiscence of the past, Everyman takes the reader on a journey to the haunting experience of old age and death through the tale of the unnamed protagonist.

Roth vividly captures the desperation and helplessness of man when forced to face the unknown but surely approaching death. The protagonist, having a keen awareness about death, suffers even in his youth the dread towards the oblivion end. While he finds easy distraction in his youth, the ominous inevitable comes eventually back to him as he grows into older age. This is a fight between one’s willing spirit and the dying flesh, to which the will always yields in the end. For humans” […are] born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us” (Everyman, 51).

Hopefully, before one manages to face it alone, one still has people and memories for consolation. As the flesh drags our consciousness, no matter how unwillingly, to the final end, at least there exists something that we can attach ourselves to. For the protagonist, it is his parents’ warm comfort the night before his hernia surgery as a little boy; his memories of sitting in his father’s jewelry store; or perhaps his daughter, the only person who cares about him. It is cruelty to experience the final steps, as we see how the protagonist’s mind always tries to find shelter in his childhood memory, when the surgeries again and again cut open his failing flesh as it undergoes numerous surgeries.

With a simple tale, Roth masterfully portrays all men’s struggle in this less than 200 pages novel. He effortlessly treats such grave subject with much ease, wisdom and elegance. Everyman, like the name suggests, is a miniature of every single human being, an insightful interpretation of an issue that all is bound to face. Surely there are all kinds of different perspectives in facing death, like those taken by other characters. However, whichever attitude we should choose to take, we are all bound to the same end. Eventually, we should all be able to accept it like the protagonist; his philosophy resonates in mind: “Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way”(79).