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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Satire
Explanation and Analysis—Clean and Purify:
After Death tells Everyman that he must prepare to take a long pilgrimage to a place where he will be judged by God (a journey that allegorically represents death in the play), Everyman struggles in vain to find some companion to accompany him on his arduous travels. After being rejected by both his friends and family, he decides to ask his worldly possessions and money to travel with him. In a scene that satirizes human greed, Everyman makes his request to Goods:
It is another disease that grieveth me;
In this world it is not, I tell thee so.
I am sent for another way to go,
To give a straight account general
Before the highest Jupiter of all;
And all my life I have had joy and pleasure in thee.
Therefore I pray thee go with me,
For, peradventure, thou mayst before God Almighty
My reckoning help to clean and purify;
For it is said ever among,
That money maketh all right that is wrong.
Here, Everyman makes a faulty argument that his money can be brought to the afterlife with him. Telling Goods that he must be put on trial before “the highest Jupiter of all” (an allusion to the Roman god Jupiter, the highest god in the Roman pantheon), Everyman notes that he has long “had joy and pleasure” in his own riches and that Goods (who allegorically represents personal wealth) should therefore accompany him to the grave. Goods, Everyman argues, might “help to clean and purify” him before his trial, as “money maketh all right that is wrong.” Here, Everyman’s naive argument is presented by the play as a satire of those who spend their lives accumulating money, which Everyman suggests is a corrupting rather than purifying force.
Related Themes:
