Intimacy and Everyman
Intimacy conflicts with human nature as it requires one to consider common good, decency, morality, and exercise restraint. Inherently, as the playwright conveys in Everyman’s journey, humans are concerned with immediate satisfaction and self-benefit; humans desire to do what feels satisfying in the moment—whether it be indulgence in goods, sex, or exploiting others. Society and cultural conventions dictate how humans ought to be, but it challenges every innate tendency of one’s being.
Everyman is powerful for its depiction of these external and internal forces in conflict. Humans aren’t naturally wholesome and selfless. Selflessness and moral endeavors are merely actions of compliance to the reigning cultural conventions idealized by the church. One fully submitting to social aims by full cultural conformity, as Everyman over the course of his pilgrimage, combats instinct and stifles one’s potential for optimal self-awareness. Everyman is immerses himself in these socially contrived practices and thus inhibits himself from being truly gratified.…show more content… His ability to reason and embrace an honest view of himself fades as he submits more to conformity. It requires higher-level reasoning and a stronger sense of self for Everyman to attempt to avoid conformity than it does to adhere to it. Everyman’s bribery presents itself as a prime example of this higher-level thinking enacted by his ego. Instead of blindly abiding Death’s request, Everyman reacts and contrives to respond to threats of his contentment. He is aware of what makes him feel satisfied and has a secure sense of self such that he feels entitled to preserve it before hearing of the irrevocability of Death’s summoning. As he conforms, he loses that entitlement to do what he pleases and embrace his lifestyle as he now experiences guilt and
