What is your own view on the personification of Death? There are many cultural views on the personification of Death. He can be seen by some cultures as the Classical skeleton of which we are most familiar and in others as beautiful and seductive. In Christian beliefs, it is the Angel of Death, in English folklaw, he is the classic Grim, hooded skeletal being armed with a Scythe. In Norwegian folklaw she is Pesta (translated as 'Plaugue Hag'). She is blackhooded. She would venture upon a townplace armed either a rake or a broom upon her person. If she had withwin her grasp the rake, some people would survive the plague, if she instead the broom however, everyone would die. In some Celtic Folklaw he is the Faery King, Finvara, King of the Dionae Sidhe, breathtakingly beautiful youthful male and a seducer of mortal women.
In contempary culture, we ourselves create out own personifications. Author of the Diskworld novels, he is the classical Grim reaper, but sharp minded and a dry as the Sahara wit. He is a nutural being being neither good or eveil, he just is..inevitable. This death had an adopted child who grew in in Death's realm, who married his apprentice (who was temparilly death) and had a child called Susan, a human who possesses death like traits.
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
In Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' Death is in complete stark contrast to the stereotypical Death . In DC' comics/graphic novels Sandman, Death is personified as an pretty porcelain pale youthful gothic female dressed in casual clothes - often a black vest and black jeans. Around her neck she wears a silver ankh on a chain around her neck, and has a marking similar to the eye of Horus around her right eye.She is a charming, pleasant, down to earth and effervescent.
Sexton - "I think the whole world's gone mad."
Death - "Uh-uh. It's always been like this. You probably just don't get out enough.
Death - ''For some folks, death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.''
Death - ''When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights, and lock the universe behind me as I leave.''
Death - ''Nobody's creepy from the inside, Hazel. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they're the only real thing in the world. But they're not creepy.''
