The Appointment in Samarra - W. Somerset Maugham (1933) - Encounter with Death

Extract

[...] Nevertheless, Servant thinks he is safe in Samarra and he is not. There was no way for the servant to change his fate. Death choose him and nobody can do anything to avoid that. The fable “The Appointment in Samarra” is very short. The author doesn't give any details about the places because he only wants to demonstrate that Death and destiny are bonded. He wants to give the readers a very simple but important message: Humans can't avoid their fate. [...]

[...] The Encounter The fable is very short and the author goes right to the main point: encounter with Death. In the first sentence, we already know that the servant meets Death at the Market in Bagdad. The author uses the word “jostled” twice in the same sentence to emphasise that there is a physical contact between Servant and Death, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned, I saw it was Death that jostled me” (Somerset Maugham 4). [...]

[...] The merchant is nice and let him go. However, he wants to find out what happened at the Market. Conclusion The message from the author is explained at the end with a lot of irony. Although the servant is afraid of Death, the Merchant is not intimidated to ask her, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my Servant when you saw him this morning?” (Somerset Maugham 4). Then Death's answer reveals the author's message to the reader: “That was not a threatening gesture, I [Death] said, it was only a start of surprise. [...]

[...] The servant does his job and has probably no idea what is going to happen. He cannot avoid his fate that he is supposed to go to the market in Bagdad. Also, the fable is very unusual by the fact that the author chooses Death to tell us the story. The fable starts, “Death speaks: “It has a lot of impact that the author uses an imaginary character to tell the story. He probably wants to show us that death and destiny are bonded. [...]

[...] The Appointment in Samarra - W. Somerset Maugham (1933) – Encounter with Death Terrorising and scary, death has always been a threatening subject. Although nobody wants to think about dying, we all wonder when Death is going to take us. In the fable “The Appointment in Samarra” by W. Somerset Maugham (1933), the author demonstrates that humans cannot avoid their fate. When a servant goes to the market and sees Death, he is so cared and petrified that he decides to leave town to go to Samarra in order to escape Death. [...]