Everyman Allegory

The play Everyman is a morality play from the middle ages sometime around the 15th century. The author is unknow; however, Everyman was printed four different times in England in the 16th century. Everyman gives a glimpse of the journey of death for mankind. This play is an allegory for Christian beliefs. The authors perception and treatment on death can be found in the throughout the play.

Everyman begins with God being disappointed in mankind with the way that they are ignoring Him. God calls death to visit “Everyman” and hold him accountable for this. Death tells Everyman that he must take a long journey, and he must bring with him his account book of his good and bad deeds. Everyman realizes who is and is frightened. Everyman proceeds

In the Christian faith salvation is gifted by God, and God does not grant salvation because of what one owns, how one looks, one’s strength, family, or friends. This play details such when the character Everyman pleads for such characters to accompany him on a journey to his grave. Jesus says in the Bible “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23). When people are concerned more with their families, friends, beauty, strength, and worldly possessions than with pleasing God He will declare depart from me (unto death?). With faith and believing in the words of the Bible man can be saved, and acquire a desire to complete good deeds. As Everyman is forsaken by his Kindred, Cousins, Goods, and Fellowship he begins to gain Knowledge and learns of Confession and this causes his Good Deeds to become stronger meaning he gains a desire to complete Good Deeds and please God. In the end one can only take good deeds with them when judged by God. Good deeds do not give Christians salvation. However, when one grows in the knowledge of Christ we desire to do good. “And let us

This choice hinges on God’s first commandment, which is the key to defining sin: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). To break this commandment brings the sentence of death.” This can be seen with the character choices I the play. As Everyman travels his journey characters of Fellowship, Kindred, Cousins, and Goods are introduced all of which is perceived to be the items that most men put before a relationship with God. Also, the same is found with Beauty and Strength. Putting these things before God brings death, and that is just what God sends to Everyman in the play. In Death’s Arrival and Everyman’s Separation Julie Paulson explains it this way: “In its depiction of abstractions such as Fellowship, Goods, and Good Deeds on stage, Everyman repeatedly demonstrates that our knowledge of social and moral concepts comes out of familiar interactions of everyday life. Yet those interactions are tested by the appearance of