Death's Gender
The initial books did not pronounce themselves about the gender of Death, although Ysabell called him 'Daddy', using the pronoun "it". However, in Reaper Man, Death is unambiguously identified as a male, and in Soul Music and Hogfather Susan calls him her grandfather or "Granddad". When asked to describe Death, in the second Discworld computer game, the protagonist Rincewind hazards a guess, "Well, I suppose he's a man. You have to look at the pelvis, don't you?" In the comic strip adaptation of Mort, Death is seen in mirrors as a black-bearded human wearing a black cloak, and also seen as this when he needs to be seen by the living.
Many non-English languages must provide a grammatical gender to each object, and death is often a feminine noun. As such, translations of early novels sometimes refer to Death as a woman. This is generally changed, however, by the time of Reaper Man. Also, the personification of Death varies from country to country leading to further confusion, for example the Russian personification is that of an old woman, the Czech version uses a (normally non-existent) male variant of the usually female word for death for his name. Explanations are given in footnotes, often with a pun.
Read more about this topic: Death (Discworld)
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or gender:
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
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—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)