Everyman

I have just finished Philip Roth's Everyman, the story of a secular Jew who tries, and fails, to make sense of his existence.

Roth is a good writer. I appreciate his skills, even though I could live without some of his rather graphic descriptions. In this book he weaves a thoughtful tale around the life of a self-obsessed man who spends almost his entire life terrified by thoughts of his own mortality. The story begins at his graveside. The dead man's relatives share memories which slide seamlessly into the narrative. They represent different eras of the man's life: two estranged sons, a distraught daughter, an ex-wife, a still-faithful older brother. He is buried beside his parents in a semi-derelict Jewish cemetery. In the annihilation of the grave, he is 'everyman.' His fate is universal.

Lacking any kind of religious faith, despite the piety of his father, the man seeks meaning in his work in an ad agency. He is successful, but eventually retires, only to see his colleagues fall, one by one. He seeks meaning in family, but fails to control his passions, and so becomes only a serial husband and a part-time father. He seeks meaning in sexual conquest, indulging in behaviors that come close to being abusive. In the end, he is left ogling young women as they jog on the boardwalk near his New Jersey home, remembering the man he had been and no longer was. Tormented by ill-health, in later years, he resents the vigor of his older brother and distances himself from him. He is horrified by the loneliness, boredom and pain of old age. Finally, at a time when he doesn't really expect it, still making plans, he dies on the operating table.

Is he really 'Everyman'? I sincerely hope not. He may be a poster boy for the hopelessness of life without Christ. He may be a fitting illustration for a sermon about Ecclesiastes. He is not everyman. He does not possess the intellectual courage to question his prejudices. He never seriously challenges the easy atheism he adopted as a youth. He does not have the moral backbone to think through the consequences of his frequent, damaging lies. He is pure subjectivity, unable to prevent himself from harming those he loves, thinking, in the end, only of himself.

Towards the end of the story, he visits his parents' graves and seems to hear his mother's words of encouragement, "So, you lived, then." He also hears his father's advice, "Atone for what you have done and make the most of what time you have left." It is advice he chooses to ignore. Faced with the reality of his increasing frailty, the loss of passion, and the inevitability of death, and having no concept of judgment, he struggles to survive, if only for a little longer. "So long, Pops," says his still-angry, adult son, as he throws a clump of soil into the grave.

In the middle ages, an anonymous Roman Catholic writer wrote a mystery play known as The Summoning of Everyman. In it, God sends death to earth to seek Everyman, in order that he might give an account of himself. Despite it's pre-Reformation allegory, which makes it difficult for modern Christians, the play makes sense of death by placing it within the context of divine judgment. The Summoning of Everyman comes from an age when life was cheaper and considerably shorter than today. But it succeeds where Everyman fails, because it takes seriously not only our mortality, but also our homesickness for heaven.