Mortality and Life Theme Analysis

By making a number of comparisons between the novel's present day and the past "Age of Mortality," Scythe closely considers what it means to be alive, and how that changes when the chances of dying are statistically slim. Through this, Scythe paints a picture of a society that has made major advancements, but it also suggests that humanity loses a number of important things when it attains immortality, including passion, purpose, and in some cases, even the desire to live.

One of the things that the scientific advancements of Scythe have done extremely well is to remove all difficulties from people's lives. Nobody in the world of Scythe—save for the Tonists, who essentially worship the Age of Mortality lifestyle and so adopt habits that mimic mortality—wants for anything. There's no poverty, illness, or inequality, and if anything does go wrong, medical care is readily available. Specifically and most importantly, people are infused with "nanites," which effectively control a person's body chemistry and even release opiates into the bloodstream if someone experiences injury or pain. This, according to Scythe Faraday, means that there's actually little reason to live—though there's little reason to die, either. As far as Faraday is concerned, an idea which the novel supports, in order to truly live, one must experience some degree of struggle or purpose.

Rowan echoes this sentiment at several points in the novel and even takes it a step further. He first picks up on it when Scythe Faraday takes him and Citra to the galleries in an art museum from the Age of Mortality, as he notices that he simply doesn't understand what it's like to live life knowing that, at the very least, a person has to work to stay alive—the emotional tenor of the paintings is something he cannot grasp. Later, Goddard turns off Rowan's pain nanites, explaining that one cannot feel joy if they cannot feel pain. After this, Rowan realizes that he was only marginally satisfied with his life prior to becoming Scythe Goddard's apprentice and having his pain nanites turned off.

Despite both the implied general lack of verve for life and the fact that being gleaned is statistically rare, it's telling that the general populace is still terrified of scythes. Citra and Rowan notice, especially after becoming apprentices to Faraday, that people in grocery stores don't seem to think of them as regular people. Instead, they're treated either with reverence as god-like figures, or with fear as though they carry a dangerous infectious disease. With this, the novel demonstrates how even in a world where death isn't a real concern for most, the natural human inclination to fear death persists. By doing this, Scythe implies that its world isn't actually so different from the Age of Mortality in that while nobody knows exactly when or where they'll die, the fact that it could happen anywhere, at any time, and in any number of mysterious ways is still a unifying human experience and an inescapable part of being alive. Citra also notices that people she assists Faraday in gleaning become instantly more compassionate, concerned for their loved ones, and attached to the mortal world as a whole—something that teaches her that the prospect of one's imminent death is one of the only things that impresses upon people that life is truly worth living.

While fearing eternal death by gleaning is something that scares most people in the world of the novel, Scythe also goes to great lengths to show how immortality deeply changes people's thinking surrounding experiences that might kill them. Rowan's friend Tyger is, prior to Rowan's apprenticeship, obsessed with "splatting:" throwing himself off of buildings in order to see how much damage he can do to the ground below, as well as to see how long he can stay "deadish" before the revival center can bring him back to full health. For Tyger, death then becomes a form of sport and entertainment. However, at a later point in the novel, Citra points out that the mental and emotional experience of both killing and dying remains the same as it once was. It's still traumatizing, and the brains of humans at this point in time cannot yet differentiate by becoming deadish by splatting and true death by gleaning. With this, the novel indicates that people like Tyger still experience the legitimate fear of dying and are working extremely hard to override a natural human instinct to keep oneself alive, just for the sake of the thrill.

Taken together, all of this paints a picture of a world in which, practically speaking, death has becoming a joke—a transformation that nevertheless doesn't actually translate to a person's experience of dying or becoming deadish. Death—even if it's not possible or not likely to come—is, even within the immortal world of Scythe, a normal and natural part of the human experience and is the only thing truly capable of showing people how meaningful their life actually is.