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Oct. 10th, 2011 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantskate_nepveu beat me to the punch this week! Here's her combo post on Equal Rites and Mort. I am going to be a bit more effusive than her, though! It's interesting, because I just spent the past few weeks talking about how the early Pratchetts are really quite decent and so on, and then reading Mort was like being hit over the head with how much I really love many of Pratchett's books, as opposed to cheerfully appreciating them. But it's so wonderful! Death feels like Death! Ankh-Morpork feels like Ankh-Morpork! (The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!) Etc.
The thing about Mort is that it's the book that definitively establishes the Discworld's Death as an endearingly bemused sort of anthropomorphic personification whom you just want to provide with a kitten and a hug - or at least a friendly pat on the shoulder, if you're too worried about bony elbows. He just tries so hard! At everything! (A special shout-out to his HILARIOUSLY AWKWARD wink-wink-nudge-nudge matchmaking, which made me shriek with laughter every time.)
The thing is, though, I want to talk about it as 'the humanization of Death' so I can point out the parallel character development with Mort, whose arc as Death's apprentice is about growing out of his utter teenaged gawkiness and naivete and into a full-fledged human being, but the word feels wrong, because although Death may be trying to become human he is never written as human; there is always that sense of otherness to him, and that is a line that Pratchett, I think, walks really well throughout the Death sub-series of Discworld. (If I'm remembering right, I actually think that for all his consistent efforts at vacationing, the short-order cook job is the closest Death will ever actually come to achieving humanity throughout the books, and . . . it's not all that close. But I could be wrong, and it's something else to keep an eye on.)
I also appreciate the bait-and-switch he pulls with Princess Keli and Ysabell, where it looks like he's setting up a fairly (and unfortunately) standard dichotomy between the spoiled, overweight girly-girl and the hardcore, unconventionally attractive Strong Female Character, and then, hey, wait! It turns out they're both awesome! WHO KNEW.
(As a sidenote, the saddest thing about reading this book is remembering that Mort and Ysabell will, in the future, pretty much completely discourage Death from ever visiting their family or having a relationship with Susan. THE SADDEST THING.)
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Date: 2011-10-11 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 08:43 pm (UTC)