Student Question
What does the character Everyman symbolize?
Quick answer:
The character Everyman symbolizes all of humankind in the morality play, representing every person in the audience at the time it was written. The play, promoting Catholic teachings, illustrates Everyman's journey to face God's judgment, where only his Good Deeds accompany him, symbolizing the good actions that help others. This allegorical narrative emphasizes the importance of living a virtuous life in accordance with Church teachings to attain salvation.
As is common in other medieval dramas, the character of Everyman, the protagonist in the anonymously written morality playEveryman (The Summoning of Everyman), symbolizes and represents all of humankind.
Although the universal concepts of the play make it applicable to every time period, including our own, the character of Everyman more particularly represents every person in the audience at the time the play was written.
The play was intended to present and promote the teachings of the Catholic Church, which was a powerful force in everyday medieval life, and to teach the audience a moral and religious lesson.
Except for God, the Angel, the Messenger, and the Doctor, every character in Everyman is an allegorical representation of some aspect or abstraction of human life.
The character of Death, for example, clearly represents the end of life, which, in the case of Everyman, appears wholly unexpectedly. The...
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first thing that Everyman does is ask Death for more time, which is a perfectly understandable human response.
Death tells Everyman that he must appear before God in judgment of his life and that Everyman must take with him those things that will best represent his life and permit him to enter Heaven.
Among other aspects of his life, Everyman appeals to Fellowship and his Worldly Goods, Strength, Knowledge, and even his Five Wits (his common sense, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory) to accompany him to his judgement before God. None of these agrees to go with him to face God except his Good Deeds, which symbolize everything good that Everyman has done in his life to help his fellow human beings.
Weighed down with Everyman's sins, Good Deeds is at first unable to go with Everyman. Everyman must first acquire the Knowledge of right and wrong taught by the Church; then he will be taken by Knowledge to the Church's sacrament of Confession to seek forgiveness for his sins.
After Everyman has done proper penance for his sins, the weight of his sins is lifted from his Good Deeds, and Everyman and his Good Deeds can proceed together to God's judgment and be admitted to Heaven—as will every member of the audience who follows the Church's teachings.