SuitabookGodfather Death
Sally Nicholls
- Reading
- Read it together rather than rushing past the ending. Pause at the choices involving God, the Devil and Death, then invite the reader to compare fairness, honesty and the consequences of trying to outwit someone.
- Themes
- Fairness and unequal fortunes: The fisherman challenges God’s claim to treat everyone alike by pointing to people whose lives are charmed and others who experience hardship. The story clearly raises unequal fortune as a moral question, but the available ending detail does not establish a final answer about what fairness requires.
- Mortality and impartiality: Death becomes the son’s godfather and gives the fisherman a way to judge whether patients can be cured, based on where Death stands beside the bed. Death is presented as powerful but also fair and honest because rich and poor alike are subject to him.
- Ambition, deception and consequences: Death’s information enables the fisherman to become a rich doctor, until he foolishly decides to trick Death himself. The wording presents the attempt as foolish and the tale as a morality story, suggesting that overreaching has serious consequences.
- Worth knowing
- The book includes death, illness, patients who cannot be saved, an attempt to trick Death, and an explicitly bleak ending. Consider whether this treatment suits the reader’s response to mortality and dark folktales.