Reaper Man (1991) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• DEATH: The grim reaper, responsible for ushering all the souls of discworld to their hereafter.
• Mrs. Cake: A medium (maybe more of a small) with a talent for precognition. She is short and round and widely feared among the leaders of the religious community in Ankh-Morpork. (And everyone else in the world, for that matter).
• Bill Door: A hired man with a dark and semi-mysterious past. He is an expert with harvesting equipment.
• Mustrum Ridcully: Archchancellor of Unseen University.
• Windle Poons: A wizard of unseen university.
• Ludmilla: Mrs. Cake's only daughter.
• Doreen: Add a description of this character.
• Arthur
• Reg Shoe
• Schleppel
• Albert
• Azrael
• Miss Haworth
• Dean
• Cyril

Quotes edit see section history

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• “The post of Senior Wrangler was an unusual one, as was the name itself. In some centers of learning, the Senior Wrangler is a leading philosopher; in others, he's merely someone who looks after horses. The Senior Wrangler at Unseen University was a philosopher who looked like a horse, thus neatly encapsulating all definitions.”

• “"You? We can't take you," said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. "You don't know a thing about guerrilla warfare."”

  The Dean

• “Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying, "O great table, without whom we are naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.”

• “I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.”

  DEATH

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• Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

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• Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to the cairn at the top, if only to prove that there is nothing really damn stupid that humans won’t do.

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• Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

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• Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out…

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• In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away—until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

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• Everyday took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede.

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• LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

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• Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place.

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• Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.

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• Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Ankh-Morpork: The twin cities of Ankh and Morpork on the Sto Plains. Ruled by Lord Vetinari.
• Unseen University: The University for Wizards.

Organizations edit see section history

• Fresh Start: a mainly undead and casual monsters support society

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Moving Pictures, and followed by Witches Abroad.

Preceded by Mort, and followed by Soul Music.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Terry Pratchett (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Andreas Brandhorst (Translator) - German

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #126)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 823.914

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Authors, A-Z › ( P ) › Pratchett, Terry
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary