What are the main themes of Everyman?

The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave, which should be expressed in a sentence with a subject, verb, and object. However, the theme of a fable is its moral and the theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme in literature is generally not intended to preach (for that is its purpose, which differs from theme), except in a work such as Everyman, which is a religious allegory, where its purpose is didactic, meaning it was written to teach a lesson about sin, forgiveness, and salvation.  Thus, the themes in Everyman coincide with its purpose, which is to teach us moral lessons:  if one falls into the “slough of despond,” for example, one must remember the goodness of God, pray, and continue to move forward in spite of the difficulties.  Each time you become away of a key topic in Everyman, try to express it as a “moral” in the form of a sentence, for in that way you will more exactly identify its themes. Its very very broad theme would be that “Life consists of a journey to God, and humankind is weak and needs God’s grace in their journey to find Him.”

Everyman is a religious allegory written anonymously in the late fifteenth century. It is mainly a story of Christian salvation in which the author expresses that the most important thing we have, which we will carry with us into the afterlife, is our moral actions.

When our main character, Everyman, who is representative of all men and women, is sentenced to judgment before God, he desperately tries to convince his "friends" to come with him on his journey. But one by one, as they deny him, we are taught that material goods and our friends and family cannot accompany us on the true journey toward salvation.

Ultimately, the story is a preaching of the ideas of Catholicism, mainly that we (all people) must make our journey to the afterlife on our own, with only our good deeds to accompany us. We cannot bring our friends, family, or goods, and thus the most important thing we should be focused on during our life is the good acts of kindness and morality which build our characters.

The basic theme of this morality play is the lesson of how to correctly and morally live your life here on earth.  Everyman absolutely has faults.  This is the whole purpose of the play...God is dissatisfied with Everyman's behavior and He sends Death to tell Everyman that his days are numbered. 

Everyman attempts to bargain for more time, and then sets out to seek a partner for the journey.  The moral, then, is that everyone and all things (material goods, beauty, wealth, friends, relatives, etc.) will forsake you except for knowledge and good deeds.  However, only knowledge can accompany you into the grave to speak on your behalf. 

"Everyman" was produced at a time when most people were unable to read for themselves and they depended on the plays, sculptures, and stained glass windows in churches to teach them about the stories in the Bible and the correct way to act in their daily lives.

One significant theme, which was written for Christian readers but is apropos for any audience, is the theme of forgiveness. It is appropriate for all because we each and everyone do things in our life of limited understanding and knowledge that turn out to be hurtful to others (unintentionally or willfully) or to ourselves and for which we need to make restitution in some form or other and for which we need forgiveness.

Everyman is an allegorical morality play that was performed to teach a lesson to the medieval audience.  The play teaches us that every man must face his death alone with only the good deeds that he has completed during his life, for this is all that truly matters. It is impossible to build up good deeds while at the same time indulging in worldly pleasures. Family, friends, beauty, strength, health, and even our senses will desert us during this final journey. Therefore, we must make sure that we are focusing on the right things in life so that we will be prepared for death.

The main focus of this play has to be the way we invest our time and resources in this life given the ephemeral nature of our existence and the inescapable reality of death that awaits us all. Given these realities, we need to think very carefully about what we do with our lives now in the light of what awaits us in our eternal future.

I agree with the earlier posts. Another standard medieval/Renaissance theme of this play is the theme of "mutability" -- the idea that our lives on earth are constantly changing and that the only source of true stability and lasting happiness for us is God in heaven.  People in the middle ages believed that our lives here on earth were merely and highly ephemeral. They believed that the existence we really needed to think about was our existence in our afterlives.

One could choose from many of the different themes depicted in the play Everyman as the most important. For me, I would tend to lead towards the idea that the most important theme of the play would be one which highlights the importance of good deeds. Hopefully, readers, or watchers, of the play come to realize that materialistic possessions are not what hold the most importance in life. Instead, it is important to come away from the play with the knowledge that doing good in life is, by far, more important.

What are the motifs in Everyman?

Motifs are structures, literary devices, and other items that recur throughout a text in order to develop its major themes. Everyman has several of them, each serving its own purpose.

The first is what the title of the work truly speaks to: being utterly average. Throughout the novel, the everyman thinks of himself as the average person (hence the word "everyman"). Everything he experiences from marriage, adultery, illness, and pain are things that he considers to be utterly typical. However, the author may want the reader to question if the story is truly average, since the work focuses exclusively on one's man average life.

Family is also a recurring motif in the novel. Everyman is surrounded by people to whom he is related, like his brother, mother, and daughter. Everyman also interacts with multiple romantic partners, from his wife to women with whom he has affairs. His blood relatives are comforting to the everyman, but his romantic partners often do not understand him.

Time also manifests constantly, usually in the form of nostalgia. The characters seem to feel that old age is a simply meaningless time meant for nothing else but reflecting back on what came before. The everyman's brother spends a lot of time reflecting on their childhood. The book in itself mainly deals with looking back on a life already lived.