By Aayush Dayal
As humans, we long to understand the unknown and delve deeper into the black abyss which lies beyond the horizon of our daily comprehension. The yearning for this state of limbo often comes along with trepidation and an overall feeling of antipathy, especially when its concerning any “black abysses”. For the most part, historically, literature has been a manifestation of our greatest fears, nightmares, terrors, horrors, alarms and apprehensions. More so, it is an attempt to fathom the thoughts that haunt us and keep us awake at night than to detest them or even pray to keep them away, for what we comprehend, we are at peace with. In effect, it is the incoherent that disturb us from our rest. And what is our most innate and eternal fear as mere mortals on this Earth – the ultimate reckoning of all our troubles, the natural law by which we all are bound, the same fate which knocks on every door, peasants and lords alike -- is Death.
And so, the Grim Reaper was born, a humanoid manifestation of the end of all humans, which is quite an irony. Every feature of the Grim Reaper’s appearance is made to look sinister and demonic, from its skeletal figure, black cloak, to its famed soul-reaping tool, the Scythe. Understandably, a character of such depth and magnitude was bound to be one of the most prevalent pop culture references in literature throughout the ages. Before all the fame and folklore however, the Grim Reaper finds its origin in 14thcentury Europe, which was ravaged by a terrible pandemic, The Black Death. In touching distance with it, many surviving Europeans started thinking of death as an entity itself. This can be seen in many works of art and literature of that era, most notably “The Triumph of Death” made by Pieter Bruegel in 1562, is a painting which shows skeletons with scythes killing humans, “No Longer Mourn for Me” (Sonnet 71) written by William Shakespeare in 1609 and “Death Be Not Proud” written by John Donne in 1633 among many others.
As time passed on, the technological revolution empowered creators to make truly timeless and thrilling references to death across various platforms that started coming to life. Whether they were characters from books such as the ‘Dementors’ and the ‘Deathly Hallows’ story in Harry Potter, the ‘Black Riders’ in the Lord of The Rings and the ‘Night King’ in Game of Thrones, or cultural mythological depictions such as Ryuk in Death Note, the Shinigami or God of Death in Japanese mythology and Anubis in the Mummy Returns, the God of Death in Egyptian mythology, or even fictional mythologies such as the demon ‘Calax’ in horror flick ‘Truth or Dare’, Nicholas Cage’s ‘Ghost Rider’ and even faceless, formless depictions of death as in the ‘Final Destination’ series , the personification of the black spectre was not limited to popular western formats.
Concluding from this downright matchless yet minuscule list of movies feeding off of the popularity of our most formidable adversary and our most revered nemesis, one can certainly tell that death makes for a great genre for all forms of media, whether it is a book, painting, movie or manga across all ages throughout history.
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