The Discovery Channel Website has a section that is entitled “What People are Curious About. This portion of the website helps to shed some light onto the origins of the Grim Reaper. The concept of an Angel of Death has been around for ages. The current image of The Grim Reaper originated from The Black Death. People during that time and were consumed with death and dying due to the epidemic that took so many lives so quickly.
Due to the over whelming amount of bodies that collected due to the wide spread disease the dead bodies were placed in piles among the streets. The dead bodies decayed and caused people to view death as bones. The dark robe gives the look of mystery since during these times the disease came quickly and was unknown, which lead to mystery in its very presence. The scythe was designed that way due to The Black death. The scythe was not originally apart of the image. It became a part of the image because it was originally from Agrarian Society. People of Europe felt that The Grim Reaper harvested people like farmers of Agrarian Society harvested crops. Below are two links that will bring people to the Discovery Channel Websites.
Supriya Konkol Blog Entry # 1
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/where-idea-grim-reaper-originate
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/westtech/x14thc.htm
Personifying death seems to be a good way for people to take some of the fear out of it. Being able to make death into an entity has led to countless stories of people bargaining with death for their own lives. If death was indeed a person of living thing than who is to say that we couldn't change its mind about its decisions.
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